Copyright © 2010 by Chester B. Cabalza. All Rights Reserved.
Everyday I spend hours on the net to check my emails, update facebook and twitter, roam in online chat rooms, and google interesting websites in a free-flowing Information Superhighway. No wonder I consider myself a net surfer. Eventhough, my fingers are already numbed clicking the mouse or typing words and my eyes are somnolent reading gazillion texts on the Internet. As I come into contact with the realm of cyberzone, likewise I suppose my world decongests and shrinks, into a smaller global village. I feel empowered because I can conquer a wide-reaching, universal boardroom that nobody knows my real identity. As a New Yorker caricature by Peter Steiner spreads its message, “on the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog”.
A few months back, I received a forwarded email alerting all concerned cyber users not to open any message with an attached file called “invitation”, regardless of who sent it. The email attack is a politically motivated missive perceived to be the ‘most destructive virus’ ever announced by CNN after it was discovered by McAfee and classified by Microsoft. The letter contains subversive contents with uploaded pictures of Osama bin Laden hanged, but once opened, it can abruptly destroy and disrupt one’s computer that you’ll not be able to fix it!
What does it all mean? So powerful message that implies precaution as Information and Communication Technology (ICT) continue to invade and pervade human life; the risks for cyberterrorism, without doubt, will continue to grow. Certainly the use of technology in cyberterrorists attacks is plausible. Our very global way of life relies on the secure and safe operations of critical systems that depend on cyberspace. In other words, as a net surfer, who frequently crosses the threshold of ‘virtual global reality’ as part of his daily routine, should also be vigilant by becoming a target of cyberterrorists.
In fact, I only came to know about the larger impact of terrorism when terrorists assaulted the World Trade Center in New York in September 2001 which tells me that nobody is safe now from the time when the lone superpower in the world suffered vulnerability with such impulsive yet devious attacks.
That fateful day, cyberterrorists have proven to be adroit of mining data by learning about the schedules and locations of targets through the Internet such as transportation facilities and airports and also public buildings. The infamy reminded me of the Internet’s susceptibility underneath the spell of the devil advocates; shriveled in a ‘virtual global community’ I use to chat with, consult with, and make friends with. Until now, it is stabbing me with immense paranoia because nowadays cyberterrorists wouldn’t cease and mind attacking civilians via the confines of cyberzones for direct mischievous instruments of bloodshed.
My ignorance condemns my sanity that I often assume terrorism is treated as a recent concept. But truly it’s not. The conception of “terrere” or terrorism was first used during the French Revolution of the 1790s according to few literatures. In the Philippines, there are some historical accounts as early as 1865 that the Sultan of Sulu gathered his supporters and Muslims in once a glorious sultanate adhered to juramentado, tantamount to Muslim jihad which in Western understanding they would call the same practice as formalized military suicide based from my readings.
But what makes it divergent before than now is that perhaps today, technology has improved a terrorist ability to infuse fear and shock a society. Yet it couldn’t be denied that the new threat bears a little resemblance to familiar disruptions by hackers for viruses and worms. For as long as there are adequate resources to launch a cyber attack that are easy to access; at the end of the day, an ignorant cyber user may not even know that the attack has taken place until only sometime after it was launched.
Nonetheless, my perceptive understanding of terrorism grounds from my morsel expertise yet voracious reading on cyberterrorism. That if not watchful, may truthfully endanger and threaten my existence in the cyberspace; since terrorist organizations and their supporters have now conquered dominion of the Internet I almost enter everyday. These sophisticated electronic communications become the cyberterrorists theatrical stage to engage in a calculated crusade and at the same time use it for indoctrination, recruitment, fund raising, and launching a worldwide campaign of fear.
By all means, cyberterrorism is the unlawful attacks against computers, networks, and the information stored therein when done to intimidate or coerce a government or its people in furtherance of political or social objectives.
Believe me, I for one have been addicted and enslaved by these cutting-edged technologies and the Internet. It is a fact that today, we are all functioning in a world fundamentally characterized by objects in motion. There is a tremendous mobility brought about by globalization where immense flood of capital, ideas, labor, profits and technology are rapidly moving across the four bounds of the earth. The explosive growth of cyber cafés in the so-called new economy and wisdom market affirm the net’s comfy uses and trendy functions that permit dissemination of any kind of data through images, music, speech, text and video. It surmounts distance and pays scant regard to territorial boundaries. But sad to say, with cheap accessibility for all, cyberterrorists can gauge the opportunities to wave and secure publicity. Their superior aptitude for technologies offers them advanced prospects to shape and control the content of their websites and manipulate the images and texts of their foes.
The appalling side of the Internet is the quiet emergence of hundreds of uncensored websites that cling to radicalism, plain old untruths, and rampant disinformation that entice cyber users to join cyberterrorists in their war. Recruiters exploit the medium of interactive Internet technology to wander in online chat rooms, searching for fellow brethren to sympathize with their cause and ideologies. Knowing the strengths of any terrorist groups, especially in their grand mission to instill fright to sundry citizens and cyber users. It could also cause economic mess for countries that turn against them. As seen by some analysts, since the Information Superhighway trespasses a country’s sovereignty, given that there is little regulation on the Internet; cyber attackers can mete out wide-scale reparations, malicious and damaging softwares that ultimately would create havoc without fear of prosecution.
Beyond all these perks for cyber attackers in the countenance of Internet’s viability to merge together comrades in brotherhood - be it ethnic, political and religious in nature; it has also created a new forum for worldwide information warfare and a novel force in transforming today’s geopolitics in a globalizing transborder universe. Without much ado, cyberterrorists will grab every opportunities and issues to foster their ideals in the net’s increasing bastion of freedom of expression that will resonate effectively with their own fellows and supporters.
The consequence of ‘virtual global community’ influx bridged by the supreme netscape paves a way for every cyber users to empathize with their own roots and cultures. For instance, the Internet would help coagulate the revival of Muslim identity and solidarity with Muslims in one country much able to see and commiserate with the struggles of their brethren in another country. With the Internet’s free flowing information, it would certainly indoctrinate a curious brethren who has access to a jihadi website. At the end, it would be graceful gain for a terrorist as he espouses the objectives of the group; especially if the group he wants to belong to suffers extreme profiling and marginalization against the ‘Others’. Indeed, this ‘virtual global community’ has an appeal to younger generations who may have entrée and exposure to seditious information through the Internet, cable or satellite TV where images and texts are potent sources for propaganda and wiles to spread out terror. This gives them various options to post and spread prisms of terrorism.
Precisely, in this age where ideology or ideas have a very powerful way of shaping a person’s cognition, facilitating the person to adopt pseudo-personality. The terrorist groups exert authoritative persuasion over their members. The sense of belonging and exclusivity diminishes the individual’s personal and moral judgment. This is the power that can make violence against the perceived enemy not just acceptable but necessary. As the new ambassadors of political and religious fundamentalism, they can stimulate or carry out attacks by summoning and undermining loose policies of the “Others” that don’t subscribe to their cause at the expense of their own beliefs and welfare. Their apparent angst are either posted in jihadi websites or disseminated through CD-ROMs.
The fluidity of cyberspace absorbed by the ‘virtual global community’ could succumb further tension and deepen international debate due to escalating schism and difference among conflicting groups. For instance in Southeast Asia alone, the mainstreaming of print, audio-visual, and especially the Internet have now emerged as the prime medium to circulate jihadi ideologies and as tools to recruit new sympathizers from Songkla in Thailand to Sulu in the Philippines and from Sabah in Malaysia to Sulawesi in Indonesia.
The fact that terrorists may employ IT as a valuable tool does not robotically mean that the entire information infrastructure will be the next target. Their initial approach is to comprehensively use and familiarize the technology as an essential stride before deciding to turn against such targets. In effect, once they fully learned and acquired the technology, they will exploit it as a weapon of mass destruction in its pursuit to ebb fear to anyone.
It wouldn’t be surprising, if by all means government official websites usually hosted by sometimes sloppy private industry Internet Service Providers (ISP) could increase espionage from cyberterrorists and cause massive electronic attacks due to lack of security mechanisms on computer systems. Besides violations can occur when an unauthorized user illegally accesses network computers that are forbidden to access. There’s a leeway that cyberterrorists could scythe critical and vital military, commercial or monetary institutions from remote locations to disrupt the free world’s defense and communications systems. Possibly, attackers could hack into computer systems for information gathering or data altering, sabotage, and installing malicious codes. These malicious codes may be distorted in the form of Trojans, worms, and viruses. There are also Deadly Distributed Denial of Service (DdoS) attacks which employ “zombie” machines that are controlled by a master server. It has the ability for taking down entire networks. Meanwhile, cyberterrorists could also apply information hiding by means of stegonography where one can simply take one piece of information and hides it with another picture or document. This well-planned strategy could cripple infrastructures and bug down key government sites and services. Cyberterrorists have the clout to destroy and disrupt critical infrastructures in split seconds. With just the hit of a keystroke, one can send a fatal blow by simply sitting in his armchair, from thousand of miles away. That could wreak greater threats to a wider gamut of annihilation from a mere nuisance to larger national security problem.
Therefore, in reality there exist scores of cyberterrorists that I would like to call them as cyber bugs because they keep on distracting the stream of Information Superhighway. There are also fears escalating among experts that countries may be progressively vulnerable to major attack by hackers and cyber bugs. They consider that both civil and military institutions, as well as key companies, are in danger of a cyber attack – possibly as a ground for terrorist attack on the country or simply as a challenge for expert young computer users. They need to be halted; albeit their mushrooming websites couldn’t be prohibited because with all due respect, they are accorded with all the rights and privileges to engage in the cyberspace; in whatever means there is. So, the initial course to silently crash these cyber bugs is to write laws on terrorism and give teeth to decrees that would cover cyberterrorism.
I exactly remember the case of a Filipino cyber geek who created the famed “I Love You” bug that rapidly troubled the fall of London stock market when it was accidentally launched and drove controversies worldwide. At that time, there was no available Philippine criminal cyber law to prosecute the accused. But that circumstance ignited the brilliant minds of our lawmakers to consider writing laws on cyber crimes.
The problem with jurisdictional and lack of laws in some countries may impede investigations. But once a government, and also a regional bloc, e.g. the ASEAN, enacts agreements in countering terrorism; the task of enforcing rules would legitimize the prosecution and extradition of criminals vis a vis terrorists in a current deterritorialized community. Cyberterrorism is now being fought at the international level and recently the UN formed Counter Terrorism Committee responsible for coordinating cyberterrorism-related response and information exchange. Meanwhile, our prosecutors and lawyers need not only learn cyberterrorism laws but they must also be trained conscientiously to ride with the use of fast-changing fads of technology and the many surprises of the Internet.
In a flat world as described by Thomas Friedman; in his metaphor to imply the “playing field is flat” in a competitive sense; blazes up the dissertation that local connects with global vis a vis global affects local will certainly influence the internationalization and mainstreaming of terrorism blended with political and religious zeal based from robust networking empowered by the revolution of the ICT.
In due time, there would be vacancies for professional cyber cops and cyber computer forensic experts to examine crimes of cyberterrorists. I would readily imagine that one day I would meet real cyber cops. To ease the tension and maybe in trying hard to be droll; what I figure in my mind's eye are policemen in full Robocop gears crashing terrorists with their high-caliber gadgets and cyber apparatus. But that would be farcical.
Comes the computer forensics, i.e., the acquisition, preservation, analysis and presentation of computer-related evidence. In other words, using an established and accepted process to identify, preserve and recover digital information critical to an investigator. Furthermore, computer forensics is also considered to be the use of computer technology to resolve an allegation or issue.
Law enforcers and investigators should be equipped with novel gadgets and forensic cyber equipment. Although, my idea does not only suggests that they should be supplied with sophisticated ala James Bond gizmos, e.g., are signing pens and Swiss knives with hidden USB that can store terabytes files or watches with hidden Internet cords. More importantly, forensic cyber experts should exude intelligence and must be methodological. They must posses patience for smaller details that distinguishes it from mere investigation because cyber bugs will always do their best to outpace them. After all, cyberterrorists deem they are smarter and technologically savvy.
In the phase of a trend-setting world encircled by issues of globalization and terrorism, countries and regional groupings must engage on tight cyber security agreements aimed at ensuring cooperation. Firstly, to undertake serious collection and analysis of cyberterrorism related information. Secondly, to minimize duplication of efforts since cyberterrorism is multi-jurisdictional and very few treatise or conventions address computer crimes across borders.
I believe that proper handling of terrorism related information through the use of various cyber investigative techniques is very significant to help eliminate or reduce such threats. Sustained training programs for law enforcers and investigators on cyberterrorism will be helpful in confronting such threats in our country and the world where the Information Superhighway transcends territorial boundaries.
By all means, all ordinary cyber users must be aware of this; not only as a precaution but a responsibility that we must carry on. To ease our fears when cyberterrorists launch a sudden and deadly cyber attack. After all, the essence of all this transgression and crimes by cyberterrorists is the use of violence encrusted with political hypocrisy aimed to ebb fear among millions of cyber users and civilians.
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