Cyberterrorism and Schools
Part I: "Script Kiddies, Hacktivists, and Cyberterrorists"

February, 2002

Cyberterrorism...the union of cyberspace and terrorism in politically or socially motivated efforts to cause grave harm including but not limited to loss of life or serious economic damage.

What is Cyberterrorism and should schools be worried? Cyberterrorism has been a hot topic for several years but given the attacks of September 11th it has developed an added urgency. In fact, law enforcement officials have reported that the World Trade Center attackers, as a group, were very computer literate, communicating via encrypted e-mail and using the Internet to help plot the September 11th events. (Fortune Magazine, October 15, 2001)

Cyberterrorism is a term coined by Barry Colin of the Institute for Security and Intelligence. He defines it as "the union of cyberspace and terrorism in politically or socially motivated efforts to cause grave harm including but not limited to loss of life or serious economic damage."

Schools are most familiar with "script kiddies". These generally young hackers do not have the skills to write their own cracking programs but use hacker tools readily available on the Internet to vandalize school and other public and private networks. They access the tools available on the more than 30,000 hacker-oriented sites on the Internet. The good news is, that according to William Church, a former US Army Intelligence officer and founder of the Center for Infrastructural Warfare, there are fewer than 1,000 professional hackers/crackers in the world. They possess hard-core computer skills, are generally way out of the age bracket of the teenage hacker, and are purely financially motivated. Although "script kiddies" may be a real nuisance and cause significant damage to computer resources; they are not acting for political reasons and they are not trying to cause grave harm and loss of life.

Dr. Dorothy Denning of Georgetown University describes three levels of cyber activity in laying out the threat of Cyberterrorism. First, there are activists. These groups use the Internet to promote their causes and to communicate with their followers. This use of the Internet is perfectly legal in most democratic countries.

Dr. Denning calls the next group "Hacktivists". They use the Internet to disrupt the normal operations of their "targets". For example, within days of the first US air strikes on Afghanistan, pro-Taliban hackers in Pakistan penetrated several Indian government computers, including one in their atomic agency, posting via e-mail, support for bin Laden and the al Qaeda terrorists. Hackers in the US responded by defacing web sites in Afghanistan (both anti-Taliban and pro-Taliban) as well as related sites in Pakistan and the US.

In 1998, the Electronic Disturbance Theater (EDT) wanted to show their support for the Mexican Zapitistas by holding a virtual sit-in. They targeted the White House, the Pentagon, the School of the Americas and the Frankfurt Stock Exchange. They distributed software via their web site that automatically accessed the target sites every few seconds. The idea was to overwhelm the target sites with traffic thus disrupting normal operations. Close to 100,000 people downloaded and participated in the virtual sit-in and the "Hacktivists" succeeded in drawing significant attention to their cause. Other examples of "Hacktivism" include:

During the Gulf War hackers stole information on US troop movements and tried to sell them to Iraq. They were turned down because Iraqis thought it was a hoax.

In 1998, Spanish protestors bombarded the Institute for Global Communications with thousands of e-mails and also spammed the staff and their web site.

In 1999, a number of NATO computers suffered Denial of Service attacks by protesters of the UN bombing in Kosovo. After the Chinese embassy was mistakenly attacked UN websites were defaced with the message, "We won't stop attacking until the war stops!"

In 1999, hackers allegedly gained control of a British military communications satellite and demanded money to return control. (This is disputed by the British military)

A Swedish hacker turned off the 911 emergency system in Florida for several hours. There was no evidence of hostile intent.

Sri Lankan freedom fighter liberation groups used e-mails to attack and overwhelm government web-site targets.

If one uses Denning's criteria, although all of these were serious breaches of security, none of them rises to the level of Cyberterrorism. An example of Cyberterrorism might be taking over controls of the air traffic control system and causing airliners to crash or causing a financial and economic depression by taking control of Wall St. computers and causing a stock market crash. These actions go far beyond the disruptions of hackivists or "script kiddies". They deal in death and large scale, politically motivated, economic damage. So how real is the Cyberterrorist threat?

>> Review Part II: How Real is the Threat of Cyberterrorism?

Top