This article was presented on II World Congress on Informatics and Law in year 2002 in Madrid, Spain by Rohas Nagpal the President of Asian School of Cyber Laws. This article discusses on the methodology and proxies used to carry out "what constitutes cyber terrorism". It also touches on laws enacted by countries regarding the issue of cyber terrorism.
In this article, he addressed cyber-terrorism as a worrying trend in parallel with globalization. He stated that cyber terrorism and cyber crime may have the same elements BUT cyber terrorism merits a more detailed definition which had been quoted in one of our first posts in Definition of Cyber-Terrorism.
"Cyber terrorism is the premeditated use of disruptive activities, or the threat thereof, in cyber space, with intention to further social, ideological, religious, political or similar objectives , or to intimidate any person in furtherance of such activities."
The difference between cyber-crime and cyber-terrorism lies in the motive and intention of the perpetrator.
Also, this article gave examples of how cyber-terrorism is carried out. It could be carried out through:
a) Hacking
which is all forms of unauthorised access to a computer or computer networks.
he also provided an interesting case whereby, a British hacker hacked into Liverpool Hospital computer system in 1994 and changed all the medical prescription for all patients. If not for the nurse who noticed a "prescribed" highly toxin medication to a 9 year old patient, the patient would have died from it. When questioned the motive of the hacker, he said he only wanted to know what kind of chaos could be caused through the hospital computers.
hacking could be carried out through packet sniffling, tempest attack, password cracking and buffer overflow.
b) Trojans
There are many types of trojans but the important ones are Remote Administration Trojans, Password Trojans, Priveleges-Elavating Trojans, Key Loggers, Destructive Trojans.
c) Computer viruses
they are dangerous in the sense where they are spreading faster than being stopped. The infamous viruses are Melissa, ExploreZip, Chernobyl, I Love You virus, Pakistani Brain, Stoned-Marijuana, Cascade and Michelangelo.
d) Computer worms
It is a self contained program that is able to spread functional copies of itself or segments of itself to other computer systems. The infamous ones are Internet Worm, SPAN network worm, and Christmas Tree Worm.
e) Email related crimes
Misused by criminals as a proxy for communication. Emails are used for email spoofing, spreading Trojans, Viruses and worms; email bombing, threatening emails, and defamatory emails.
f) Denial of service attacks
this action is aimed at denying authorized persons access to a computer or computer network. it may be launched using a single computer or millions of computer across the world.
g) Cryptography
It a disturbing trend emerging with the increase use of encryption, high-frequency encrypted files/data links, steganography by terrorists and members of organized crime cartels.
It seems like countries around the world are aware of such activities and the governments have enacted laws for such cyber criminal activities. Their law may not be comprehensive but it's enacted to serve the current pressing issues than to prevent future happenings.
For more details on the discussion on law, it would be best to refer to the article itself as it provides a better understanding for the readers.
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