CYBER-TERRORISM – HOW MUCH OF A THREAT IS IT? - Cyberwar-Netwar: Security in the Information Age - page 55

Azarov : I would like to emphasise my point of view that latent cyberwar is a
deterrence mission. Deterrence mission is only a threat of control interception.
Cyberterrorism and terrorism generally is a crime and this crime intends to destroy
civilian information infrastructure. That is why I think that cyberwar is not
cyberterrorism. We have to define by international laws the possibility of providing any
country with latent cyberwar.
Mateus da Silva : One thing which amazes me is the nature of international terrorism
today. Because so many things are happening everywhere, in my opinion, what is
needed is planning, command, control and logistics. With the dimension of terrorism
now, it is difficult to believe that only an organisation like Al Qaeda, together with the
other multitude of national terrorist organisations around the world could have the
capability to organise terrorism. Could a state organisation, let us say for instance the
secret service of Pakistan, be involved? Can it only be Al Qaeda and other
organisations?
Kolobov : I would like to come back to the philosophy of pricing for protection
systems. For the protection system we should not pay a price that is higher than the price
of the information to be protected. But that rule does not work when we are talking
about national security. It is very complicated just to calculate the price for national
security aspects in that case. That is why I am sure that the best way to gather all efforts
of all interested providers, operators and groups of people who are in charge such as
government or non-government security experts, is to make equal rules for every
organisation working with critical infrastructure. That is our philosophy on how we can
protect attacks from the outside, from keyboard terrorists, etc. We have to try to make an
international coordinated network to make sure that if one country gathers information
about the preparation for a terrorist attack on another country, it is passed to that country.
We have to be sure that in less than eighty milliseconds that information will appear in
that country.
Erez : Basically, to carry out a terror act, you do not need much of an infrastructure.
You do not need real command and control as we would think about in military terms.
You need people who volunteer to commit suicide or to implement an act. You need
some explosives and devices and someone to plant a bomb and, of course, you need
money in order to finance all these activities. So we do not really need a command and
control mega insrumental organisation in order to carry out such an attack. I think one of
the mistakes we make in the Western hemisphere today with terrorist activities is that we
associate everything with Al Qaeda and we have therefore created Al Qaeda as a
monster. I think that Al Qaeda is much more a kind of venture capital that invests in
start-ups in many countries, because in many countries there is already a group which is
frustrated or has a grudge. If we look at Turkey, there was a small local group, almost
forgotten, but some individuals who were veterans from Chechnya and Afghanistan
trained in explosives and arms. Motivated by some spiritual leaders, real or fake, they
had a kind of local start and are already being financed and maybe brainwashed by these
leaders into believing in visions of heaven; a problem which we very much face in Israel.
This is a way of carrying out terror today. As I mentioned earlier, at a conference in
Israel, King Hussein of Jordan described part of the financing in the organisation as an
“oil-garchy”, a pun on oligarchy, meaning the use of oil revenues in order to finance