Courtesy of Ora DeMorrow

The latest talk in the media regarding terrorism is an ongoing debate about what kind of attack should we expect next.

Such talk leads to many more questions: Should we worry about a bombing, or perhaps a chemical or gas release?  Might someone poison our water system?

Actually, the answer may be none of these. Most experts believe that the next major successful attack (many potential attacks are thwarted and we never even find out about them) will be a breach of our “cyber security.”

What exactly does this mean? A cyber attack may sound like a giant computer virus that would wipe-out everyone’s computers but it is actually much more complex than that. Let’s explore the basics of cyber terrorism, and how it can affect the civilian population. 

Massive computer networks run everything around us—our lights, our water, our financial systems, our roads, and on and on. And although many of the weaknesses in computerized systems can be corrected, it is effectively impossible to eliminate all of them. Even if the technology itself offers good security, it is frequently configured or used in ways that make it open to attack. In addition, there is always the possibility of insiders, acting alone or in concert with other terrorists, abusing their access capabilities.

The formal definition of the term cyber terrorism, as described by Princeton University’s WordNet lexical database is “an assault on electronic communication networks”. To be more specific, these networks are those that have direct impact on our daily lives. According to the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation, cyber terrorism is any "premeditated, politically motivated attack against information, computer systems, computer programs, and data which results in violence against non-combatant targets by sub-national groups or clandestine agents."

Unlike a nuisance virus or “malware” viruses that may enter your computer, a cyber terrorist attack is designed to cause physical violence or extreme financial harm. According to the U.S. Commission of Critical Infrastructure Protection, possible cyber terrorist targets include the banking industry, military installations, power plants, air traffic control centers, and water systems.

Cyber terrorism is sometimes referred to as electronic terrorism or information war. Computer networks and information technology infrastructures are fragile and easily brought crashing down.

Terrorists are trying to exploit vulnerabilities commonplace in operating systems, software, and various forms of technology. They are now using computers, Internet communications, and tools to infiltrate critical national infrastructures systems, such as water, electric, and gas plants, oil and gasoline refineries, nuclear power plants, and waste management plants.

In Russia in 1999, the state-run gas monopoly, Gazprom, was reportedly hit by hackers in collaboration with a Gazprom insider. The hackers were said to have used a “Trojan horse” type of computer program to gain control of the company’s central switchboard, which controlled gas flows in the company’s pipelines. However, Gazprom, the world's largest natural gas producer and the largest gas supplier to Western Europe, denied the report.

In 2009, Dr Andrew Colarik, an information security consultant explained that the goal of terrorism is to cause severe disruption through widespread fear in society, meaning "our dependency on digital material”. 

“The majority of our currency is not paper, it's digital,” Colarik says. “And like money, if we loose confidence in the underlying system, we will have insolvency.” 

The United States is a serious target because of our dependency on the online system. The majority of the countries that represent a threat to America don't depend on the digital system and so they have an opportunity to attack without the risk of suffering from similar counterattacks.

So what do these potential cyber attacks mean to us? They help point out the fact that we are all vulnerable. Unfortunately, there isn’t much that we, as individuals, can do about such attacks.

In the meantime, we all need to be more vigilant about what we download or open on our computers. My advice is to just to be safe, limit the amount of information that you store on the Internet cloud, and even digitally on a home storage device.

If you have paper copies of records, keep them. Without electricity, digital backup is useless.