Policing Cyber Hate, Cyber Threats and Cyber Terrorism by Blakemore Brian;Awan Imran;

Author:Blakemore, Brian;Awan, Imran;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Group
Published: 2012-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

Global Cyber Attacks

Cyber terrorism has become an international legislative issue which requires countries to pursue cyber terrorist acts via their own traditional modes of legal practice as well as using cyber crimes to prosecute those involved. However, as countries begin to understand the nature and threat of cyber terrorism they have also begun using a broad range of multifaceted agreements and protocols that allows member states to take the necessary measures to ensure anyone who illegally accesses information and interferes with computer data has committed an offence (EU Council Framework Decision on Attacks against Information Systems, Article 2 and Article 4). This form of partnership work has led to the Budapest Convention on Cybercrime (2001) which is a broad and comprehensive treaty that deals with ICT related crime and cyber crimes in general by making member states have national legislation in place that will help tackle the cyber threat. One of the key objectives of the convention is prosecuting those involved in cyber hate crimes (see Chapter 5), generic cyber threats that include wider terrorist use of the Internet (see Chapter 9 on national security strategies for more detail) (Council of Europe 2001).

Moreover the EU Council Framework Decision on Combating Terrorism under Article 1 states that all member states must work together where a cyber attack has taken place. A cyber attack in this context has to be one that seriously intimidates a population or seriously destabilises a constitution – the paradox being that there is still no universal definition of the term cyber terrorism (Wykes and Harcus 2010; see Chapter 2 for further discussion on the meaning of cyber terrorism).

In May 2007, Estonia came under siege for almost 3 weeks from hackers using sophisticated modes of technology. They were able to deface and cripple a number of governmental, financial and political websites. This attack is not the first of its kind as similar incidents of cyber attacks have taken place against different countries. However, such cyber attacks do highlight the vulnerability of countries to computer-based crime and is one the reasons for national agreements (discussed below). The attacks in this case were political in nature and came to the surface when a war memorial to the Red Army was removed from the capital by the government (Traynor 2007).

The extent of the damage caused in Estonia and the reverberations of the consequences for the international community meant there was a need for further international agreements that protect countries against similar cyber attacks. The hackers in this case redirected users of the government sites to powerful graphic and visual images of Soviet soldiers in war battle lines and also left quotations and speeches from Martin Lurthur King. The images and speeches also acted as a motivational tool for the demonstrators giving them hope, trust and confidence. Before this incident, the Estonian government had invested heavily in protecting itself from such cyber attacks. It had mechanisms which, it argued, could combat this threat. For example an Information Computer Technology infrastructure in place

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