Combatting Cyber Terrorism (for Raymond Rhine) by Alice Turley

Author:Alice Turley
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781787785212
Publisher: IT Governance Publishing Ltd

CBRN

Terror attacks and plots designed to deploy chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear materials are thankfully rare. Before mass-scale digital communications, instances of terror groups and lone actors ordering bomb-making manuals from educational outlets or sharing explosive designs via couriers and CD-ROMs were relatively rare (compared to other security threats) and generally intercepted or monitored by security agencies and law enforcement bodies. In attempting to overthrow their own state by provoking nuclear warfare, Japan’s cult group Aum Shinrikyo (‘Supreme Truth’) carried out 17 known chemical and biological attacks against citizens during the early 1990s, including lethal sarin gas attacks in Matsumoto City (1994) and against commuters using Tokyo’s subway system a year later (Monterey Institute of International Studies: 2001). A biological attack (anthrax), supposedly targeting the New York subway, conducted by two active members of white supremacist group Aryan Nation – was foiled by an informer’s tip-off in 1997 (CBS News: 1998). One week after the 9/11 atrocities in America, letters containing anthrax spores were posted to prominent senators and news media offices in an episode of bioterrorism that claimed five lives and injured up to 68 others (Cymet and Kerkvliet: 2004).

In 2003, a prominent Al-Qaeda-supporting theologian published online “a twenty-five page fatwah seeking to legitimise the use of weapons of mass destruction against the United States” (Dean: 2018: 265). One passage read: “If those engaged in jihad establish that the evil of the infidels can be repelled only by attacking them with weapons of mass destruction in a surprise manner, they may be used even if they annihilate all the infidels” (ilmway.com cited in Tenet: 2007: 273–4 and Suskind: 2006). The “electronic blueprints” for constructing a chemical weapon (dubbed ‘al-Mubtakkar’, translated as ‘The Invention’) were then posted onto several Al-Qaeda online forums, the recipe then spread “like a virus” during early 2004. The “eight-page manual” provided more than thirty diagrams providing advice on construction and target selection (Dean: 2018: 265). By November 2004, a prominent US news organisation published instructions to assemble chemical dispersal devices that had originated from Al-Qaeda’s dedicated, central bomb-making research laboratory, located within an Afghanistan terrorism training camp until US-coalition airstrikes forced its closure in Autumn 2001. Three years later, America’s mainstream news agencies fanned out the product’s design and intent far and wide: “Little or no training is required to assemble and deploy such a device, due to its simplicity […] One or more devices assembled devices could easily be brought aboard a train or subway […] It is difficult to judge the number of casualties that would result from the use of multiple devices; however, such an attack will likely generate fear and panic among the local population” (Dean: 2018: 264).

Nevertheless, predictions and fears that the Internet will open up a Pandora’s Box of CBRN threats, particularly within urban environments laced with soft targets, are yet to materialise into anything other than periodic threats. In 2015, a software programmer from Liverpool, UK, was sent to prison after attempting to purchase the toxin ricin from an undercover FBI officer.

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