Cyber Terrorism and Its Effects on Society

This report discusses cyber terrorism and its effects on society. It covers the difference between cyber terrorism and regular terrorism, types of cyber terror capability, and motivations for performing cyber terrorism. The report also provides examples of cyber terrorism and growing concerns of cyber terror and its effect on human psychology.

Running Head: CYBER TERRORISM
Cyber Terrorism
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Introduction:
This report will enlighten on cyber terrorism and its effects on society. Cyber terrorism is
described as the use of internet to perform malicious actions that might lead to loss of life and
threaten lives (Hua and Bapna, 2013). The actions are conducted for achieving political gains by
making people fear from harm and injury. Terrorists sometimes use this media to conduct
terrorist activities that might cause disruption in computer networks. The attacks are performed
by using computer viruses, phishing and other malicious hardware and software tools. The
following paragraphs will focus on brief history of cyber terrorism followed by some real
examples that caused serious loss to people. Capability of different cyber terrorism will also be
discussed in brief.
Discussion:
Difference between cyber terrorism and regular terrorism:
Cyber terrorism continues to be a threat to citizens and Internet security firms. Cyber
terrorism creates fear in minds of people regarding banking information and passwords.
However, there are several differences between cyber terrorism and regular terrorism. Terrorist
activities like bombing in a busy market or an airport spreads more fear among people than cyber
terrorism. Cybercrime is the other name of cyber terrorism (Eid, 2014). Information systems of
various organizations are hacked to fulfill personal objectives. Terrorist activities are aimed at
destroying social, religious and political objectives of people. Communication networks are
exploited to carry out cyber-attacks (Dawson Omar and Abramson, 2015). Regular terrorism
psychologically manipulates people by creating a climate of threat among them for the purpose

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of religious and political gains. However, in case of both cyber terrorism and regular terrorism,
attacks made by perpetrators are outside the bound of conventional warfare.
Cyber terrorism is also referred to as Non-Kinetic Warfare whereas regular terrorism is
referred to as traditional kinetic warfare. Cyber warfare can be conducted by anyone as it has low
entry cost. Several cyber terrorism tools are available in multimedia that can be accessed anytime
and anywhere. The cost incurred for conducting regular terrorism attacks is higher than that of
performing cyber terrorism.
Three types of cyber terror capability:
There are three levels of cyber terror capability. They are simple-unstructured, advanced-
structured and complex coordinated. Simple unstructured attacks are considered as the capability
of conducting basic hacks on individual information systems using tools that are created by
someone else. Few command, control and target analysis is possessed by the organization.
Advanced structured cyber terror are sophisticated attacks that are performed on multiple
networks. Elementary command, control and target analysis is possessed by the organization.
Mass-disruption is created by complex-coordinated attacks. Sophisticated hacking tools are
created that facilitates high command, control and target analysis in the organization.
Brief definition of cyber terrorism:
Some authors define Cyber terrorism as use of computer, public internets and networks
intentionally to harm and destroy people. Terrorists experienced in hacking are used to spread
terror among citizens and cause enormous damage to government systems, national security
programs and hospital records that places the affected country in turmoil (Gupta Agrawal and

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Yamaguchi, 2016). Psychology of people and economy of the country is destroyed and they are
in a fear for further attacks.
Growing concerns of cyber terror and its effect on human psychology:
Cyber terrorism is increasingly being discussed in social media. As social media proved
to change people psychology, terrorism is being discussed among groups and communities in
entire world. People psychology says that cyber terrorism directly affects country’s economy
leading to great depression. Most leaders say that cyber terrorism ranks first in percentage of
threat that it spreads among citizens ruining mental health of people (Uma and Padmavathi,
2013). With growing number of computer systems, number of cybercrime that occurs each year
increases. This might lead to a more serious cyber threat and is considered as one of the top
events that can end human race. Terrorists will be able to access the Dark Web that is considered
as a part of the internet. The computer systems along with internet of things will give a great
opportunity to terrorists to carry out malicious actions on nations.
Various findings reveal that cyber terrorism increases anxiety and stress, feeling of
vulnerabilities is intensified that has hardened political attitudes. Critics demonstrate that
responses to cyber terrorism are similar to that of conventional terrorism. Loss of property is one
effect of cyber-attacks that might lead to mental instability of people when the amount is huge.
These actions demoralizes civilian population who pressurizes government to refrain from a
specific policy (Bogdanoski and Petreski, 2013). They might be effective in few cases. Cyber
terrorism like conventional terrorism aims at ruining political and ideological goals of by
psychologically harming civilians. There are two types of cyber terrorism that might occur. One
is cyber war and the other is cybercrime. Cyber war is defined as the use of malware that
disables military targets (Tehrani Manap and Taji, 2013). On contrary cybercrime is aimed in

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accomplishing personal motives by harming others. Cyber terrorists performs malicious actions
by stealing money, identities or data and mounting a Distributed Denial of Service attack on the
computer network. Cyber terrorism unlike conventional terrorism do not threaten lives however
destroys mental strength of people. Therefore, government pays less attention to effects of cyber
terrorism on civilians.

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Figure 1: Stress and anxiety among citizens due to cyber attacks
(Source: Gross Canetti and Vashdi, 2017)
Figure 2: Graph of amount of stress and anxiety created by cyber terror
(Source: Hua and Bapna, 2013)
Cyber terrorism also leads to personal insecurity that cause imbalance in mental health of
people.
Some examples of cyber terrorism:
Specific groups perform Cyber terrorism. One such group that performed cyber-attack in
1997 is Chaos Computer Club (Uma and Padmavathi, 2013). They tricked Quicken software and
stole money from users by using Active X Control.

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In May 2007, Estonia was subject to cyber-attack by distributed denial of service attacks
that bombarded specific sites. All Estonian government ministry networks along with bank
networks were knocked down.
Motivations for performing cyber terrorism:
The main motive for performing cyber terrorism is financial reasons. However, some
authors argue that cyber terrorists are motivated due to political injustice towards them. As a
result, they attack government systems because the systems rely on internet. Terrorists are
brainwashed to perform such attacks against the government of nation.
Conclusion:
From the above discussions, it can be concluded that cyber terrorism is almost similar to
conventional terrorism. However, intensity of effects is not as high as conventional terrorism.
They mainly demoralizes people and affects their psychology. Computer networks along with
internet of things will damage government systems and lead to huge loss of property. This leads
to huge chaos among the citizens. They fear for their passwords and banking information. A
number of attacks have been conducted between the years 2013-2016. Attack conducted in
Estonia was one of the popular cyber-attacks. Cyber terrorists specialized in hacking are the one
who performs these malicious actions. Various tools like viruses and DDoS are used to carry out
these attacks. They jam the network that brings all operation to a halt. The other part of internet
known as the Dark Web is used to carry out these malicious attacks.

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References:
Michael L. Gross, Daphna Canetti and Dana R. Vashdi, 2017; Cyberterrorism: its effects on
psychological well-being, public confidence and political attitudes, Journal of Cybersecurity,
Volume 3, Issue 1, Pages 49–58, https://doi.org/10.1093/cybsec/tyw018
Hua, J. and Bapna, S., 2013. The economic impact of cyber terrorism. The Journal of Strategic
Information Systems, 22(2), pp.175-186.
Tehrani, P.M., Manap, N.A. and Taji, H., 2013. Cyber terrorism challenges: The need for a
global response to a multi-jurisdictional crime. Computer Law & Security Review, 29(3), pp.207-
215.
Uma, M. and Padmavathi, G., 2013. A Survey on Various Cyber Attacks and their
Classification. IJ Network Security, 15(5), pp.390-396.
Bogdanoski, M. and Petreski, D., 2013. Cyber terrorism–global security threat. Contemporary
Macedonian Defense-International Scientific Defense, Security and Peace Journal, 13(24),
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Dawson, M., Omar, M. and Abramson, J., 2015. Understanding the methods behind cyber
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Eid, M. ed., 2014. Exchanging terrorism oxygen for media airwaves: The age of terroredia: The
age of terroredia. IGI Global.
Gupta, B., Agrawal, D.P. and Yamaguchi, S. eds., 2016. Handbook of research on modern
cryptographic solutions for computer and cyber security. IGI Global.

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Combs, C.C., 2017. Terrorism in the twenty-first century. Routledge.
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