less than 2% of the jihadis came from a computing background. 3 And not even these few could be assumed to have mastery of the complex systems necessary to carry out a successful cyberterrorist attack.

Real-world attacks are difficult enough. What are often viewed as relatively unsophisticated real-world attacks undertaken by highly educated individuals are routinely unsuccessful. One only has to consider the failed car bomb attacks planned and carried out by medical doctors in central London and at Glasgow airport in June 2007.

Hiring hackers would compromise operational security. The only remaining option is to retain “outsiders” to undertake such an attack. This is very operationally risky. It would force the terrorists to operate outside their own circles and thus leave them ripe for infiltration. Even if they successfully got in contact with “real” hackers, they would be in no position to gauge their competency accurately; they would simply have to trust in same. This would be very risky.

So on the basis of technical know-how alone cyberterror attack is not imminent, but this is not the only factor one must take into account. The events of Sept. 11, 2001 underscore that for a true terrorist event spectacular moving images are crucial. The attacks on the World Trade Center were a fantastic piece of performance violence; look back on any recent roundup of the decade and mention of 9/11 will not just be prominent, but pictures will always be provided.

The problem with respect to cyberterrorism is that many of the attack scenarios put forward, from shutting down the electric power grid to contaminating a major water supply, fail on this account: they are unlikely to have easily captured, spectacular (live, moving) images associated with them, something we—as an audience—have been primed for by the attack on the World Trade Center on 9/11.

The only cyberterrorism scenario that would fall into this category is interfering with air traffic control systems to crash planes, but haven’t we seen that planes can much more easily be employed in spectacular “real-world” terrorism? And besides,

the term
“cyberterrorism”
unites two significant
modern fears:
fear of technology
and fear of terrorism.

aren’t all the infrastructures just mentioned much easier and more spectacular to simply blow up? It doesn’t end there, however. For me, the third argument against cyberterrorism is perhaps the most compelling; yet it is very rarely mentioned.

In 2004, Howard Schmidt, former White House Cybersecurity Coordinator, remarked to the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary regarding Nimda and Code Red that “we to this day don’t know the source of that. It could have very easily been a terrorist.” 4 This observation betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature and purposes of terrorism, particularly its attention-getting and communicative functions.

A terrorist attack with the potential to be hidden, portrayed as an accident, or otherwise remain unknown is unlikely to be viewed positively by any terrorist group. In fact, one of the most important aspects of the 9/11 attacks in New York from the perpetrators viewpoint was surely the fact that while the first plane to crash into the World Trade Center could have been accidental, the appearance of the second plane confirmed the incident as a terrorist attack in real time. Moreover, the crash of the first plane ensured a large audience for the second plane as it hit the second tower.

Alternatively, think about the massive electric failure that took place in the northeastern U.S. in August 2003: if it was a terrorist attack—and I’m not suggesting that it was—but if it was, it would have been a spectacular failure.

 

conclusion

Given the high cost—not just in terms
of money, but also time, commitment,
and effort—and the high possibility of
failure on the basis of manpower is-
sues, timing, and complexity of a po-
tential cyberterrorist attack, the costs
appear to me to still very largely out-
weigh the potential publicity benefits.
The publicity aspect is crucial for po-
tential perpetrators of terrorism and
so the possibility that an attack may be
apprehended or portrayed as an acci-
dent, which would be highly likely with
regard to cyberterrorism, is detrimen-
tal. Add the lack of spectacular moving
images and it is my belief that cyber-
terrorism, regardless of what you may
read in newspapers, see on television,
or obtain via other media sources, is
not in our near future.

References

1. Cavelty, M.D. Cyber-Terror: Looming threat or phantom menace? The framing of the U.S. cyber-threat debate. Journal of Information Technology and Politics 4, 1 (2007).

2. Denning, D. A view of cyberterrorism five years later. In K. Himma, Ed., Internet Security: Hacking, Counterhacking, and Society (Jones and Bartlett Publishers, Sudbury, MA, 2006), 124.

3. Gambetta, D. and Hertog, S. Engineers of Jihad. Sociology Working Papers, No. 2007–10, Department of Sociology, University of Oxford, (2007), 8–12; http:// www.nuff.ox.ac.uk/users/gambetta/Engineers% 20 of%20Jihad.pdf.

4. Virtual Threat, Real Terror: Cyberterrorism in the 21st Century (Serial No. J– 108–58), hearing before the Subcommittee on Terrorism, Technology and Homeland Security of the Committee on the Judiciary, United States Senate, 108th Congress, Second Session, (Feb. 4, 2004), http://cip.gmu.edu/archive/157_ S108VirtualThreathearings.pdf.

 

Maura Conway ( [e-mail]) is Lecturer in International Security in the School of Law and Government at Dublin City University in Dublin, Ireland.

Copyright held by author.