A Review on Internet Security: Impact to Fight Cyber Terrorism

First of all, what is cyber terrorism?

It is basically define as the use of information technology by terrorist groups and individuals to execute attacks against networks, computer systems and telecommunications infrastructures. Some example would be such as hacking into others computer systems, introducing viruses to vulnerable networks, web site defacing, denial-of-service attacks, or terroristic threats made via electronic communication.

Here are some of the cyber terrorism events which has happened previously...

1. In May 2007, Estonia was subjected to a mass cyber-attack in the wake of the removal of a Russian World War II war memorial from downtown Talinn. The attack was a distributed denial of service attack in which selected sites were bombarded with traffic in order to force them offline; nearly all Estonian government ministry networks as well as two major Estonian bank networks were knocked offline. Despite speculation that the attack had been coordinated by the Russian government, Estonia's defense minister admitted he had no evidence linking cyber attacks to Russian authorities.



2. In October 2007, the website of Ukrainian president Viktor Yushchenko was attacked by hackers. A radical Russian nationalist youth group, the Eurasian Youth Movement, claimed responsibility.



3. In 1999 hackers attacked NATO computers. The computers flooded them with email and hit them with a denial of service (DoS). The hackers were protesting against the NATO bombings in Kosovo. Businesses, public organizations and academic institutions were bombarded with highly politicized emails containing viruses from other European countries. No physical harm or injury had been inflicted.

The Effect of Cyber-terrorism...

Cyberterrorism can have a serious large-scale influence on significant numbers of people. It can weaken countries' economy greatly, thereby stripping it of its resources and making it more vulnerable to military attack.

Cyberterror can also affect internet-based businesses. Like brick and mortar retailers and service providers, most websites that produce income (whether by advertising, monetary exchange for goods or paid services) could stand to lose money in the event of downtime created by cyber criminals.

As internet-businesses have increasing economic importance to countries, what is normally cybercrime becomes more political and therefore "terror" related.

Steps to be taken to prevent Cyber-terrorism...

1. All accounts should have passwords and the passwords should be unusual, difficult to guess.


2. Change the network configuration when defects become know.


3. Check with venders for upgrades and patches.


4. Audit systems and check logs to help in detecting and tracing an intruder.


5. If you are ever unsure about the safety of a site, or receive suspicious email from an unkown address, don't access it. It could be trouble.