Running Head: Cyber Terrorism Gurnay1

Cyber Terrorism
University Of Texas at El Paso
Alejandro Gurany







Cyber Terrorism Gurany2

Abstract
One of worlds biggest threats in the past years is cyber terrorism; many countries had been experience
problems because of this threat. Cyber terrorism is a way that people use in order to get information and
secrets that are hidden, obviously there are things being done in order for it to stop but unfortunately this
is not helping at all. The conflict with cyber terrorism is growing every-day and there is no way to stop
it. There are forms to reduce the danger of providing important information to people that you dont
want them to look at them. The percentages of the top 20 countries being affected by cyber terrorism
point to the United States as the number one country being affected. It is incredible to know that we are
living a life without knowing that there might be other people around the world hacking us without us
even noticing it









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Introduction
Cyber terrorism has become one of the biggest conflicts in United States due to the problems that has
caused population in the past years. U.S. citizens that had experience cyber terrorism are now conscious
of the danger that there is out there and now understand how easy is for other people to look up your
private information and steal your information. Not many people in the United States are aware of the
dangers that cyber terrorism can make and the problems are being occasionated thanks to society. There
are also ways to prevent this threat from happening, one of the most common places to find it is via
Internet. The U.S. government is also taking role in this conflict by the fact of all the things that are
being done in order to stop this threat to grow even more. In order to obtain more information about this
conflict the answers of the following questions are useful to get a better understanding over the conflict.
1. What is cyber terrorism?
2. Is cyber terrorism affecting the US only?
3. What is best to do in order to stop cyber terrorism?
4. What is the US government doing about it? Are we safe?

These four questions were created in order to get more information about the conflict and the solutions
to it. Each question was created for them to be answered in your own head and then read the answer
provided to see how much you know about this subject and you will be surprised of how much you
really know about cyber terrorism and how much you just learned.

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What is cyber terrorism?
What really is cyber terrorism? Cyber terrorism is a form of espionage that gets information from people
without knowing it is happening. "Cyber war refers to a massively coordinated digital assault on a
government by another, or by large groups of citizens. It is the action by a nation-state to penetrate
another nation's computers and networks for the purposes of causing damage or disruption."(Al-Ahmad,
2013). Cyber terrorism is caused by people that want to steal information such as identity or even secrets
hidden from everyone. This has become very famous in the U.S. because of the fact that many countries
are interested in the secrets that the US has. Cyber terrorism has not only affected the country but it has
also affected the community. In the article A detailed strategy for managing corporation cyber war
security. International Journal of Cyber-Security and Digital Forensics by Walid Al-Ahmad talks about
how easy it has become for people to get information out of the internet and also talks about different
cases where society has started to feel unsafe in the U.S. Corporation cyber war attacks are expected to
increase rapidly and until now there isn't any optimal and satisfactory solution to address this
problem(Al-Ahmad, 2013) this were the words that Al-Ahmad used to express the way he sees the
problem of the cyber war. The article gives great information about how the cyber war works. it
mentions,
The complex cyber challenge is divided into five levels of security problems: home users and
small businesses, large enterprises, critical infrastructure sectors, national vulnerabilities, and the
global information grid of networked systems. Cyber espionage is to collect information on an
opponent's secrets, intentions, and capabilities. It consists of the search for access to classified,
personal or corporate data, intellectual property, proprietary information and patents, or results
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from research and development projects, for reconnaissance, probing, and testing of information
and communications technology defenses, and clandestine manipulation of data, information and
critical infrastructure for war preparation.(Al-Ahmad, 2013).
The main points of cyber terrorism is to espionage other people and get all the information possible from
them, this is the reason that everyone is exposed to the cyber war thanks to the internet connections.
Now a days it is much easier to go online and gather information of other people and expose their
information to others, this is why people dont feel safe anymore.
Is cyber terrorism affecting the US only?
The U.S. is one of the most affected regions in the world, however its not the only nation being
affected. Places like China and Russia are also being affected by this threat. It is amazing how this
problem has being growing over the past years. In an article titled Cyber kleptomaniac: why china steal
our secrets by John Lee mentions serious concern about the cyber espionage being conducted against
America by its enemies", U.S has many enemies around the world that are doing everything possible to
hurt them. Now there are even jobs that consist of working for people that want to get information from
other places without them knowing what its going on. In China there are places where people hack
computers of other countries in order to gather private information and get paid for doing this. There are
hundreds of thousands of attacks launched around the world daily, with attackers including student
hackers and criminal gangs, and these attacks cost billions of dollars.
At any given time, millions upon millions of people connect to each other via cyberspace.
While a convenient method for grandparents to view pictures of their grandchildren, the Internet
is also an exceedingly effective vehicle by which to attack a state, a company, or an individual.
These attacks occur with frightening frequency, over 1,000 per hour in Great Britain alone and
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Britain recognizes the severity of the cyber threat. In the first four days of the November 2012
fighting between Israel and Gaza militants, over 44 million attacks on Israeli websites and an
estimated 100 million total attacks occurred. Cyber-attacks cost Australia "an average of $2
million per incident" and exceed a billion dollars per year. Successful attacks also occur against
international
bodies, such as the International Atomic Energy Agency. These cyber-attacks seek not only
military targets, but also industrial espionage(Kessinger, 2013).
This information given in the article Hitting the cyber marque: issuing a cyber-letter of marque to
combat digital threats by Christopher M. Kessinger gives more specific information of what cyber
terrorism really is and also gives the example of the US being affected as well as other countries.
The following graph (Graph 1) shows the top 20 countries being affected by cyber terrorism, and
it clearly shows the United States having by far the most cyber-attacks, followed by China and
then Germany.

Figure 1
.
Europol: The Center to Fight Cybercrime, 2010

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What is the best thing to do in order to stop cyber terrorism?
Now this is the question that many have, but there is no clear answer for it. How do we stop cyber
terrorism? So far there is no way we can stop cyber terrorism, it is a big conflict not only in the US but
also in the world. There are ways that we can prevent cyber terrorism and the most common way to
prevent this from happening would be not posting private information in the internet.
The implementation of existing security and privacy assessment policies tends to encourage
security officials to spend limited cybersecurity resources on measures that do little to enhance
the security of information systems. The federal government's approach to evaluating FISMA
compliance relies on process-oriented methods that focus on the completion of checklists rather
than on whether agency cybersecurity programs measurably improve the security of federal IT
assets
Karen S. Evans and Julie M. Anderson used this words on their article A detailed strategy for managing
corporation cyber war security. What they try to say is that security privacy is not secure anymore, it is
pretty hard to keep everything safe specially when the world inside the Internet is growing everyday
even more. This helps us understand the fact that our government is doing everything possible to keep us
safe from this threat.
What is the U.S. government doing about it? Are we safe?
This question is one of the most famous questions so far because of the fact the US citizens are scared
not being sure if they are safe in the country they love. How can you know if you are safe? Well its easy,
everyday people hack our computers and get our information to try to get information (dont use
information twice) that we dont know they need but they cant hurt us or do anything against us
because of the safety the U.S. guarantees. However, its true we are not completely safe because people
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from other countries are working hard to try to break our government shield and get not only to us, but
to the entire country. This is scary and dangerous because we are living in a world where we dont really
know if our money is safe? If our identities are safe? Chairman Mike Rogers commented
You don't have to look far these days to find a press report about
another firm, like Google, whose networks have been penetrated by
Chinese cyber espionage and have lost valuable corporate
intellectual property. And that's just the tip of the iceberg.
There are more companies that have been hit that won't talk about
it in the press, for fear of provoking further Chinese attacks.
When you talk to these companies behind closed doors, however, they
describe attacks that originate in China, and have a level of
sophistication and are clearly supported by a level of resources
that can only be a nation-state entity. Attributing this espionage
isn't easy, but talk to any private sector cyber analyst, and they
will tell you there is little doubt that this is a massive campaign
being conducted by the Chinese government
Conclusion
In conclusion, to this cyber terrorism conflict, it is true that the government is doing everything possible
to protect their country and themselves, but we are not completely safe from other countries and all the
workers behind them trying to get past the U.S. protection in order to get private information. There is
no way to prevent this from happening but yes we can reduce the windows for them to get closer to us
and try to steal our identities. We are not the only ones being affected by this threat, places like China
Russia and Canada are facing the same situations However, they keep everything in silence and do their
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best for it not to grow even more that it is now. We live in a time where we dont really know if we are
secure, but we do now that we are not the only ones in the world with this conflict.
















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References
Al-Ahmad, W. (2013). A detailed strategy for managing corporation cyber war security. International
Journal of Cyber-Security and Digital Forensics, 2(4), 1+. Retrieved from
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?id=GALE%7CA359172419&v=2.1&u=tlc199095667&i
t=r&p=AONE&sw=w&asid=b0ea049b3b497af276bf56cd38cf0c10
Anderson, J. M., & Evans, K. S. (2013, Fall). A new way of evaluating cybersecurity to reduce risk:
agencies are mandated to assess information systems security risks. Managing those risks on a
continual, rather than annual, basis can save scarce resources. The Public Manager, 42(3), 50+.
Retrieved from
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?id=GALE%7CA344208292&v=2.1&u=tlc199095667&i
Kessinger, C. M. (2013, August). Hitting the cyber marque: issuing a cyber letter of marque to combat
digital threats. Army Lawyer, 4+. Retrieved from
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?id=GALE%7CA348874951&v=2.1&u=tlc199095667&i
t=r&p=AONE&sw=w&asid=ef5acf9901fea7400516220470fa4fe1
Lee, J. (2013). Cyber kleptomaniacs: why China steals our secrets. World Affairs, 176(3), 73+.
Retrieved from
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?id=GALE%7CA343363039&v=2.1&u=tlc199095667&it=r&p=AONE
&sw=w&asid=09a4188d949087e3307f5e689ea1b77e