Online Library

The technological age has forced the U.S. to engage a new set of national security challenges. Several potential adversaries have cyberspace capabilities comparable to those of the U.S., and are constantly conducting surveillance, gathering technical information, and mapping critical nodes that could be exploited in future conflicts. How can the U.S. government best defend against future cyber attacks? Recent policy documents set out a strategy for securing all of cyberspace, which experts argue is impossible to implement, but also unnecessary. This thesis seeks to move the discussion beyond this stalemate by undertaking an analysis of the vulnerability of cyberspace to terrorist attacks. The first analysis examines the Code Red Worm and the Slammer Worm. These two worms were selected because they were highly destructive and spread faster than normal worms, making them well suited for assessing the existing security of computers and networks. The next analysis examines a staged cyber attack on critical infrastructure, entitled Attack Aurora. In the staged Aurora attack, researchers from the Department of Energy’s Idaho lab hacked into a replica of a power plant’s control system. This attack is the most recent staged attack and facilitates an analysis of vulnerabilities of critical infrastructures to cyberterrorism.

VOX-Pol Blog Post.

This paper discusses how cyberspace has become a venue for terrorists groups for recruiting and proliferating propaganda and terrorism. Moreover, this study explores how the low cost Internet infrastructure and social media sites (such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube) have contributed to their networking and operations due to the convenience, in terms of availability, accessibility, message redundancy, ease of use, and the inability to censor content. Concepts such as cyber-weapons, cyber-attacks, cyber-war, and cyber-terrorism are presented and explored to assess how terrorist groups are exploiting cyberspace.

Governments have long worried about terrorists using the Internet to launch cyberattacks, spread propaganda, recruit and radicalise individuals and raise funds. However, the Islamic State’s exploitation of social media has caused a crisis and generated questions about international law’s role in addressing terrorism in cyberspace. This article analyzes international law in connection with potential terrorist cyberattacks and terrorist use of cyber technologies for other purposes. International law is not well positioned to support responses to terrorist cyberattacks, but the lack of such attacks to date undermines incentives for states to develop international law against this threat. In terms of terrorists using the Internet and social media for propaganda, radicalisation, recruiting and fundraising, the crisis caused by the Islamic State’s online activities has not created consensus strong enough to support a prominent role for international law in countering cyber-facilitated terrorism.

When CSIS published Securing Cyberspace for the 44th Presidency two years ago, cybersecurity was not a major issue for public policy. Along with the work of many others, our first report helped to change this. However, the new energy in the national dialogue on cybersecurity has not yet translated into sufficient progress. We thought then that securing cyberspace had become a critical challenge for national security, which our nation was not prepared to meet. In our view, we are still unprepared.

This paper presents a review of intervention programmes against cyberhate. Over the last decade, the preoccupation over the use of electronic means of communication as a tool to convey hate, racist and xenophobic contents rose tremendously. NGOs, legal professionals, private companies, and civil society have developed interventions but little is known about their impact. For this review we followed the method and protocol from the guidelines from the Cochrane Collaboration Handbook for Systematic Reviews and the Campbell Collaboration Crime and Justice guidelines. The review identified three key intervention areas: law, technology and education through the empowerment of the individuals under the form of counter-speech. No specific intervention towards aggressors was found and most projects focus on prevention or victims through confidence building and skills learning to speak out, report and potentially react in an appropriate way. We did not find any rigorously assessed interventions, which highlights a gap in research and stresses the need for this type of studies. The evaluation of effectiveness of interventions needs to be included in the near future research agenda. Up to now, although intentions are good, we have no evidence that the steps that are undertaken are effective in preventing and reducing cyberhate.