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November 19, 1997, TechWeb News

Net-Based Terrorism A Myth
ByDouglas Hayward

LONDON -- Terrorist groups are not using the Internet for anything more than propaganda and internal communications, despite recent hype about the Net's potential to cause terror and destruction, according to a leading European security consultant. Terrorist commanders are aware that Internet could be used as the conduit for "information warfare" attacks aimed at crippling IS systems crucial to the operation of military and civilian organizations, said Neil Barrett, a principal security consultant with Groupe Bull.

But terrorist leaders are not yet ready to use the Net as an attack tool, said Barrett, at a seminar on digital terrorism Tuesday at the International Centre for Security Analysis in London. Terrorists don't think that Net-based attacks have the kind of potential to cause deaths and widespread damage that conventional weapons such as bombs have, he said.

"The link between computers and the real world is still sufficiently weak that creating damage is not as easy as it seems," Barrett said. "We are looking at a year or two years before any civilian and military infrastructures are vulnerable to potentially lethal attacks."

Security experts have issued a series of warnings this year about the potential for politically-motivated hacking attacks to cripple key computer-controlled systems, such as computerized ambulance dispatch systems, telephone networks, missile systems, or electricity generating stations.

Earlier this month, the President's Commission on Critical Infrastructure Protection concluded in a report that the United States is potentially vulnerable to serious cyberattacks, adding that "our vulnerabilities are increasing steadily while the costs associated with an effective attack continue to drop."

But recent reports of Net-based terrorist incidents are based on a misunderstanding of the difference between terrorism and malicious or politically-motivated hacking, Barrett said. In one case, an Internet chess club was attacked by hackers, and the attack was described as a terrorist attack, he said.

"Terrorism involves a willingness to kill and a political motivation in support of an on-going conflict," Barrett said. "Terrorists using hacking techniques rather than bombs has not happened yet."