CYBER-TERRORISM – HOW MUCH OF A THREAT IS IT? - Cyberwar-Netwar: Security in the Information Age - page 54

this is something that is not trade of pain and gain. This is something that I believe that
every country and organisations like NATO have to define so that institutional and
infrastructure facilities can be protected at any price.
Valente : I think I have an even worse case scenario than that. My fear is that the use
in organisations of some network equipment to protect them from attacks would not be
feasible. Unless you did that at the level of Tier-one telecom operators, the big telecom
operators like World.com, UU.net, MCI or ATT, where the network core would have
blockages or filters, I think it would be quite difficult. But the even worse scenario for
me is a group of terrorists being able to set a bomb somewhere and then cause chaos by
disrupting the technological infrastructure of the emergency services; it involves some
technical knowledge to disrupt that technological network. Now the effects could be
much worse and easier to do if the terrorist group just disseminated a message with no
need for hacking, to say, for example, that at a certain place three Ferraris were being
given away. A lot of people would gather at that place. Let us say that five hundred or a
thousand people believe that some event or show is taking place. Then a bomb explodes.
Normally it might cause little damage, but because of the large number of people in the
area, many human lives are lost. How do we stop this and what kind of filters can we put
in place, machine-wise, to technologically stop someone from disseminating a simple,
so-called marketing message?
Erez : One of the things we experience in Israel is that if there is a detonation of one
bomb and all the first aid and rescuers arrive to see what has happened, then another
bomb explodes in the same place and causes double or triple damage. We must face this
but my concern was about infrastructure that can cause damage for a huge part of a
nation.
Handy : Is that cyberwar or cyberterrorism? It could possibly be cyberterrorism, but it
is really conventional terrorism using an electronic medium to collect people in a certain
area. But the reason I do not classify this as worse is because this is not necessary
military as it has not been attributed to a nation state.
Valente : Netwar is war waged by a decentralised distributed group using network
means.
Handy : The web underground does not belong to a particular national sanction body;
it is basically a non-state entity. So how is that war? When it is not associated with one
or more countries, it is just an organisation outside the law.
Stanley : The term war is not only used for military. You can have trade wars or gang
wars and these are not all necessarily to do with nation states, but they exist. So the term
cyberwar has been coined and maybe is the wrong word in the sense of which we have
been speaking. Our focus is on cyberwar and the concept of attacking infrastructure
electronically. Another thing we hear is that if it is not two nations fighting then it
cannot be war. But for NATO and this is a NATO-sponsored workshop, our defensive is
countering attacks against these countries, so that is the base of it. If we are talking about
a war it does have validity.