CYBER-TERRORISM – HOW MUCH OF A THREAT IS IT? - Cyberwar-Netwar: Security in the Information Age - page 53

DISCUSSION OF PART I:
AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 MILLISECONDS
Lt.General Mateus da Silva
with contributions from Dr. A. Erez, Dr. M. Valente, Col. D. Handy, Dr. D. Stanley, Dr. S. Azarov, Prof. S. kolobov,
Prof. B. Heurlin, Maj.General L. Vellone, Dr. C. Mounier, Mr. G. Kahraman
Mateus da Silva : This debate is on Part I of the workshop, “Around the World in 80
Milliseconds”. We had presentations from Dr. Azarov on an “Instrumental Corrections
for a Definition of Cyberwar”, from Dr. Aharoni on “The Quest for Simplicity in
Security: Digital Signatures Made Simple” and from Dr. Erez on “Cyber-terrorism: how
much of a threat is it?”. My suggestion is that we should try to make a cross-debate
instead of asking questions to the speakers.
Erez : One of the trends of the terrorist or let us say one of the qualities of terrorists, if
we can use the word quality, is patience. I do not speak about all kind of terrorists but
what we call now a post-modern terrorism. In espionage we use the term sleeping agent.
They penetrate modern society, its infrastructure and wait for the moment that they can
attack. When the investigation was made after the 11 September attacks the investigators
found some of the suspects were studying in the United States or studying or working in
Germany and using the infrastructure of the country in order to prepare themselves. For
cyberterror you do not need a battalion but some qualified people who can do the work.
It is a kind of war for which we have to prepare ourselves for the time when terrorists
decide to act. The levels of possibility of attacks start with what I call the psychological
level which is used in the web as a media tool. The web is now used in order to try to
influence the audience. After terrorists have targeted their victims, they turn to the
remaining audience, presuming that it is living in fear and panic. One of the advantages
that we found in Israeli society was that many audiences were not so influenced by the
situation. And all we have come through in the past few years did not influence the
morale and stability of the nation; a surprise I believe for many. We spoke about
definitions and what I am trying to define is a strategic attack; let us say a traditional
terror act combined with an act through the web. At the same time as a terrorist attack,
the government, the Red Cross and communication systems will be used to combine
chaos in the area of the event. This is a kind of combination that can be used in due time.
In the 11 September attacks the communications area was not in the same building. So
we saw that part of the chaos was because there was no electricity or communications
and the effect was enormous. This brings me back to the question that because
everything is calculated in the trend of gain and pain, how much do I pay to gain
security? One of the things we need to raise is the need for some kind of legislation that
will impose on vulnerable infrastructure systems the necessity to add such security
solutions to prevent any penetration from unauthorised people at any cost. Because if
tomorrow a national bank can be emptied by some negative orders given by some hacker
or if air traffic control can be penetrated causing collisions above any crowded airport,