Cybercrime, Cyberterrorism, Cyberwarfare: Averting an Electronic Waterloo.

• Author: Ferrall, Bard R.
• Position: Review

CYBERCRIME ... CYBERTERRORISM ... CYBERWARFARE ... : AVERTING AN ELECTRONIC WATERLOO (Washington, D.C.: The Center for Strategic and International Studies, 1998) 73 pp.

This book is a report on America's vulnerability to disruption of its information systems by isolated individuals, profit motivated criminal organizations, and ideological groups aiming to alter the balance of power. Possible forms of "information warfare" (IW) (physical attack, hacking, and software or data attack), the types of perpetrators, and their tactical objectives are discussed. This problem has received much attention; however, a particular type of attack, "strategic information warfare" (SIW), has not. Although SIW may employ tactics similar to IW, it would employ them for larger objectives, such as the reduction of America's influence in a region. SIW, in contrast to IW, foregoes overt attack on information systems in favor of long range monitoring to discover weak points and to develop a coordinated, multi-point attack at the optimum time. Since monitoring of information systems (without any overt act) may leave no traces, and "weapons" used in IW are legal and widely available, intelligence agencies may fail to detect SIW planning by an enemy. (Despite the lack of hard evidence, the authors give reasons to infer a significant chance that SIW is being planned.) Deregulation and globalization of the infrastructure of information transmission, and the fact that most information technology is...