Failed terrorist attack prompts questions about the next time
Thursday, December 31, 2009
Cyber security experts said, in the wake of the failed bombing of a Northwest Airlines flight bound for Detroit, that the next terrorist attack could come from cyberspace.
Janice Abel of the ARC Advisory Group warned that "there are so many risks from a cyber attack including someone erasing your entire system or even using your computer to attack someone else." Abel is one of many security professionals who believe that the threat of cyber terrorism is very real and in need of extensive investigation.
In a recent interview with BankInfo, security expert Marcus Ranum said that cyber terrorism is an insufficiently studied threat to the integrity of the web, and that the security community as a whole had a responsibility to better protect itself from this possibility.
Possible targets for cyber terrorist activity include the national power grid, government communications systems, and other internet-connected sections of the national infrastructure. Attacks could take the form of anything from a flood of email spam to a well-coordinated DDoS campaign against several targets at once.
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