Abstract
Terrorism is one of the fears that influenced the economic, political and security transformations of contemporary societies. The effects of terrorism can be traced back to ancient Greece and evolved en par with societies through the centuries. The anarchist ‘propaganda by deed’ methodology was followed by other terrorist movements later on in history, as well as in the modus operandi of the terrorist organization in the last decade. So the question remains, so now what’s next? The Internet and its ‘natural habitat’ gave the possibility to develop what has been recognized as cyber-terrorism. The services provided by the Internet allow terrorists to adopt an entrepreneur approach to their business. New products are quickly sought and customised to achieve defined goals like any other enterprise. The Internet allows terrorists to spread their message to a far wider audience than that permitted by other non-Internet environments. Cyber-terrorism evolved from being the support infrastructure necessary to commit an attack to the attack itself. This lethal cocktail kindles the need to rethink the economic, political and security strategies in order to mitigate the effects of cyber-terrorism.
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Notes
- 1.
Estonia was the victim of a nationwide sustained cyber-attack during a 2 week period in April and May 2007. Its information critical infrastructure was the main focus of this attack. The targets included government and parliament portals, financial institutions, ministries, media and news broadcasters. A number of distributed denial of service attacks focused their wrath on the country’s infrastructure forcing some of them to shut down for prolonged periods. These attacks were supported by a number of defacement attacks that planted Russian propaganda on several Estonian websites. In retaliation a number of Russian web pages were compromised and defaced. Estonia blamed the attack on Russia after a period of fall out between the two nations related to the shifting of a Soviet-era war memorial in Tallinn. The country appealed to European Union and NATO partners to take firm action against this form of cyber threat.
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Calafato Trevor is a Lecturer at the University of Malta in the Department of Criminology. Before moving to university he was a probation officer for more than 6 years, where he was also in charge of the health, safety and security of the Department of Probation. While reading a M.Sc. in Security and Risk Management at the University of Leicester he studied the potential responses and preventive measures of terrorist incidents in Malta. He holds a PhD from the University of Sheffield which focuses on security measures and terrorism research. He published articles and book chapters on security, terrorism, criminology, criminal justice and on Cesare Lombroso.
Caruana Paul has just joined the University of Malta after a career in policing. During his service within the Malta Police, he was responsible for police ICT infrastructure, cybercrime investigations and criminal statistics. In 2002 he was appointed as head of a specialised cybercrime team for the Malta Police. Participating in a number of international investigations and initiatives, Paul led this specialist team until his retirement in 2012. During this period he managed to bring together key stakeholders addressing eSecurity and cybercrime management through a holistic approach. Working within the Department of Criminology, Paul specialises in cyber based criminology. He is currently participating in the Commonwealth Cybercrime Initiative helping member states in safeguard their ICT infrastructure from cyber related threats. He is also reading for a PhD in cyberstalking and harassment at the University of Leicester.
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Calafato, T., Caruana, P. (2015). Terrorism in Transition: The Implications of Cyber-Terrorism. In: Katsikides, S., Koktsidis, P. (eds) Societies in Transition. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-13814-5_10
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