Case Study

Cyberterrorism can be in the form of Information attacks which are attempts to access, destroy, or alter information retained, processed, and distributed by computers and their networks and infrastructure attacks which are attempts to damage or disable critical services such as transportation, the distribution of electricity, gas and water, air traffic control and other critical government services (excelsiour, 2020). Hacktivism would be to use a computer to progress an agenda either a social or politically motive stance on a subject matter. The fundamental difference between cyberterrorism and hacktivism is that one wants to destroy (cyberterrorism) while the other (hacktivism)wants to persuade people to their cause or create a change.

Technology has advanced these types of groups agenda farter and faster than ever before. There has always been dissenting views to what governments agendas or from what is the acceptable social norms for behavior. But now with the Internet (Technology) groups (mostly radical) can reach out to a greater audience perpetrate nefarious deeds with some form amenity. Groups can post fake news, statistics or false information to sway an audience to believe as they do. We only need to take our national security agencies word (or can we?) that state sponsored hackers infiltrated our last presidential election to sway our votes.

In my opinion our governments have perpetuated the lack of freedoms that we the people are supposed to enjoy and, in many cases, still think we have but don’t. Governments have used for themselves and suppled countries that are under totalitarian rule the software to hack SSL inscription. SSL inscription is what is supposed to protect people privacy of communication over the internet. Communication such as Gmail or your private online discussions. State sponsored Trojan’s are used by the governments now to monitor normal peoples and suspects communications to investigate its own citizens -internet connections – watch and listen to online discussions they can even collect your passwords. People have always assumed that they have some basic privacy from the government. People should now assume that what they do on a computer is going to be known by whomever wishes to view or listen.

When cybercrime expert Mikko Hypponen talked to an audience at TEDxBrussels, an independent event about how company based in Germany sold to the Egyptian government a set of tools for intercepting, at a very large scale, all the communication of the citizens of the country. This really started me to think about when this video was made -2011 a decade ago this was occurring. How far have we gone to invading privacy since then is the question?

I don’t believe that Hacktivism is a subset of cyberterrorism. I do believe they need to walk a fine line. I can understand their existence with all the government intrusion over the last 20 years (see TED video). How else are ordinary people to push back on the issues of the day. Hacktivists are not motivated to destroy things like with cyberterrorists. Most hacktivists do so seeking to spread an ideology. Most fight against censorship and in favor of freedom of information. But there are those who do so for personal and or political gain. Some hacktivists spread their own ideology, but others do so collectively within a group such as Anonymous. These groups often employ the use of organizations such as Wikileaks to anonymously post information in favor of their ideas and beliefs (Putnam, 2020).

Reference

(excelsior, 2020) Module 6: Learning & Assessment Activities, Module 6 Power Point Retrieved from https://excelsior.instructure.com/courses/16361/pages/module-6-learning-and-assessment-activities?module_item_id=1345381

TED,. (2015). Three Types of Online Attack Retrieved from https://www.ted.com/talks/mikko_hypponen_three_types_of_online_attack?language=en (Links to an external site.)

(Putnam, 2020). What is a Hacktivist? {Cybersecurity}Retrieved from https://www.uscybersecurity.net/hacktivist/