School of Information Systems

The Battle Of Codes

04 Aug 2023

This era is tightly tied with cyber dimension as a universal bunker where confidential information are wrapped & ought to be secured. Neither bombs nor guns, it is codes played with smoldering desire that now gives a large margin in the battle. Yet a single digit be left off guard, could potentially endanger, or at least inconvenience the lives of many.

The term cyberterrorism is stipulated in various meanings around the world. In this article, cyberterrorism is defined as an act of deliberate small-scale or large-scale disruptions of systems, networks, and electronic infrastructures through cyberspace/internet, that is motivated by religious, political, or ideological causes, that is intended to intimidate, raise fear, or compromise the security of governments or a section of public at large. Thus, hacking into a company for economic reasons isn’t considered an act of cyberterrorism. A cyber attack could be initiated from a sophisticated individual purposely recruited for a political agenda, to a high level structured independent group or oftentimes organized under terrorist groups playing frontline roles. Associated actors might also be common citizens voluntarily involved themselves in an open-source cyberterrorist operation.

Cyberterrorists stand apart from the conventional avenue of terror raising in the fact that participants utilise the recently developed domain of cyberspace. Comprehension on terrorist utilization of the internet is critical to discerning the avenues in which terrorists advance their interests. These include information,  provision, financing, networking, recruitment, and information gathering. Information provision calls attention to the terrorists’ endeavor at propaganda and publicity. Its primary objective is to garner the support of the hearts and minds of the public in general. The Internet has allowed terrorists to manipulate both their own images and that of their opponents. Financing is a crucial means by which terrorists sustain themselves, they may exploit charity groups and use e-commerce tools to their advantage. Although the digital footprint of currency is easier to track,terrorists go to great lengths to operate in plain sight with minimal risk of detection and greater avenues of cash flow. Networking touches on terrorists’ abilities to coordinate with each other from a distance, as well as their capacity to decentralise their organisation via the Internet. Recruitment refers to the attempts by terrorists to search and enlist people sympathetic to their cause. Lastly, information gathering constitutes the potential for terrorist groups to conduct data mining regarding potential target information.

In September 2016, Ardit Ferizi, aka Th3Dir3ctorY, 20, a citizen of Kosovo, was sentenced to 20 years in prison for providing material support to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), a designated foreign terrorist organization, and accessing a protected computer without authorization and obtaining information to provide material support to ISIL. Ferizi was accused of unauthorised access to an illinois-based company, which allowed him to compromise customer data (specifically US military and government members) and obtain their PII (personally identifiable information), which included email addresses, phone numbers, locations, and account passwords. He then provided a “kill-list” (over 1,000 targets) to ISIS affiliate Junaid Hussaid, under the alias “Abu Hussain al-Britani”

Constructivists believe that actions, interactions, and perceptions shape or reshape realities. Cyberterrorists fight for their ‘ideals’ through cyber tactics to make a real physical impact in the world. Their focus on ideational factors implies dissatisfaction showing that society is not fixed, but rather subject to change. Take a controversial internet group Anonymous as an example, who initiated some ‘protests’ in the form of cyber attacks a number of times in the past. Observing through constructivist lens, their attemps are to process a construction of norms. They programmed back-doors to organize their protests and get information out of the rest of the world and called their action “an attack on free speech and information”, succeeded to bring people to stand with them and support their movement that is called to be an act of “cyberterrorism”. On February 10th, 2010 they brought down governmental and parliamentary  websites in protest of Australia’s proposed Internet censorship legislation. Similar action was taken in the 2019 Iranian elections after President Achmadinijad ordered strict censorship of communication websites to cripple the protestors’s ability to organize.

Reasoning through critical theory perspective, cyberterrorists perceive the state to be non-transparent or restraining people’s right, and presume certain political groups to be taking advantage of the ‘secured opaque’, bringing on unjust outcomes to the people. Therefore, potential privacy or disrupting vital infrastructure through cyberspace for liberation from any oppressing parties. Having proven themself to be a formidable non-state actor that brought significant impact on the society, policymakers should attempt to grasp and counter such groups on ideological planes to foster security and a stronger global community.

References

Jason Sim, Tri Pudjiadi