What is Cyber Terrorism?

In this article, we will learn about Cyber Terrorism and its effect. Cyber Terrorism is basically the process of causing harm to the community by making use of Internet networks to conduct violent incidents like loss of life or data, to achieve some political advantage by giving threats.

 More about Cyber Terrorism:

• Cyber Terrorism basically involves damaging large-scale computer networks to achieve a loss of data and even loss of life. Hackers make use of computer viruses, spyware, malware, ransomware, phishing, programming language scripts, and other malicious software to achieve their purposes.
• Also, these types of cyber-attacks which often lead to criminal offenses are referred to as Cyber Terrorism. These cyber-attacks create panic and physical damage to a large number of people.
• Cyber Terrorism deals with creating damage to the people and their data using computer networks intentionally in order to achieve their meaningful purpose.
• Government Agencies like the FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigations) and the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) in the past have detected multiple cyber attacks and cyber crimes through terrorist organizations.
• The main purpose behind carrying out Cyber terrorism is to carry out some cyberattack that makes a threat.
• According to the FBI, a Cyber Terrorism attack is defined as a cybercrime that may be used intentionally to cause harm to people on large scale using computer programs and spyware.
• A cyber terrorism attack is much more harmful than a normal cybercrime because to intentional harm to the victims and it may not cause financial damage to cause fear in society.
• In most cases, the criminals target the banking industry, military power, nuclear power plants, air traffic control, and water control sectors for making a cyber terrorism attack for creating fear, critical infrastructure failure, or for political advantage.

Working

The cyber terrorism attacks work in the following ways:

• They use computer viruses, worms, spyware, and trojans to target web servers and IT service stations. They want to attack military utilities, air force stations, power supply stations to disrupt all the services.
• They use a Denial of Service attack where the original verified user cannot access the services for which he is authorized. This creates a sense of fear among the people for important essential services like medical emergencies.
• These attacks help cyber criminals to get unauthorized access to the user’s computer using hacking and then stealing that information to fulfill their wrong purposes.
• Ransomware helps them to hold data and information by asking for some ransom money from the victim and they even leak the private data of the users if they don’t get the desired amount.
• They mostly use phishing-based techniques to target users using infected spam emails to steal the user’s information and reveal that identity to everyone.
• The most popular attack used in cyber terrorism is the APT (Advanced persistent threat). They use complex penetrating network models to hack into large-scale computer networks like in an organization. They make themselves undetected in that organization network and then they continuously steal information related to military equipment, national defense information, etc.

Attacks:

The cyber terrorism attacks are usually carried out as follows:

• Unauthorized access: Attackers aim to disrupt and damage all the means of access to the service.  Instead, the hacker gains unauthorized access to the important resources.
• Disruption: These attacks focus on disrupting public websites and critical infrastructure resources to create fear within the society of massive fatalities and commotion.
• Cyberespionage: The government usually carry out some spyware operations on other government of other country related to military equipment to gain an advantage over rival nations in terms of military intelligence.
• Economic failure: Cybercriminals want all the technical system failures to cause a large-scale economic failure like crashing the electricity or water systems for multiple days to create a panic of these services within the society.

Prevention:

We can prevent situations like cyber terrorism in the following ways:

• Government must regulate all cybercriminal activities and make stricter rules regarding its violation. They must dedicate more resources to deal with cyber threats.
• There must be more public education about these activities to the general audience. This will help to create even fewer vulnerabilities that the criminals take advantage of targeting the user’s data. It empowers the citizens to protect themselves from such kinds of phishing and spyware attacks.
• We must use VPNs that help us to use private and protected network setup that is difficult to crack into by hackers.
• Use strong passwords with a strong combination of alphabets, strings, and numbers in them. Features like two-factor authentication also play an important role in this thing.
• Don’t open unknown links, URLs, websites, and spam emails that may contain harmful infected files in it and it may harm the entire computer system.