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Cyber-terrorism
Cyber-terrorism
A Student paper written by Jimmy Sproles and Will Byars for Computer Ethics at ETSU 1998 What is cyber-terrorism? How is it important to computing professionals? How is it important to the rest of society? What is being done about cyber-terrorism? How can I protect myself from cyber-terrorism? Ethical issues involved with cyber-terrorism. More information about cyber-terrorism.
What is Cyber-terrorism?
The FBI defines terrorism as the unlawful use of force or violence against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a government, the civilian population, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social
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objectives. Cyber-terrorism could thus be defined as the use of computing resources to intimidate or coerce others. An example of cyber-terrorism could be hacking into a hospital computer system and changing someone's medicine prescription to a lethal dosage as an act of revenge. It sounds far fetched, but these things can and do happen.
Why do we care?
The idea of this site is to both illustrate the importance of understanding the dangers of cyber-terrorism, and provide information that can aid in that understanding. Computing professionals all over the world need to be aware of possible areas of weakness to such terrorism, in order to better protect their computer systems and possibly help put an end to terrorist activity. An important part of any profession is promoting the good name of that profession, but cyber-terrorist continue to give the computing profession a bad reputation. Thus, it is important for computing professionals to understand cyber-terrorism for the benefit of themselves, their profession, and society as a whole. Because cyber-terrorism is an increasing problem in our society, everyone needs to be aware of what it is and what dangers it presents. A presidential committee (Summary of committee report) recently requested that the government upgrade its defenses against cyber-terrorists because of the increasing danger. (Related article from washingtonpost.com) Also, with the emergence of newer e-mail clients that allow more active content to be displayed when messages are opened, it is becoming easier for terrorists to do damage to others' computers by means of viruses. Cyber-terrorism is a real danger to be looked into by not only computing professionals, but anyone who uses a computer network of any kind.
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of protection is encryption. The wide spread use of encryption is inhibited by the governments ban on its exportation, so intercontinental communication is left relatively insecure. The Clinton administration and the FBI oppose the export of encryption in favor of a system where by the government can gain the key to an encrypted system after gaining a court order to do so. The director of the FBI's stance is that the Internet was not intended to go unpoliced and that the police need to protect people's privacy and public-safety rights there. Encryption's draw back is that it does not protect the entire system, an attack designed to cripple the whole system, such as a virus, is unaffected by encryption. Others promote the use of firewalls to screen all communications to a system, including e-mail messages, which may carry logic bombs. Firewall is a relatively generic term for methods of filtering access to a network. They may come in the form of a computer, router other communications device or in the form of a network configuration. Firewalls serve to define the services and access that are permitted to each user. One method is to screen user requests to check if they come from a previously defined domain or Internet Protocol (IP) address. Another method is to prohibit Telnet access into the system. Here are few key things to remember to pretect yourself from cyber-terrorism: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. All accounts should have passwords and the passwords should be unusual, difficult to guess. Change the network configuration when defects become know. Check with venders for upgrades and patches. Audit systems and check logs to help in detecting and tracing an intruder. If you are ever unsure about the safety of a site, or receive suspicious email from an unkown address, don't access it. It could be trouble.
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