Cyber terrorism: a clear and present danger, the sum of all fears, breaking point or patriot games?

Stohl, Michael

doi:10.1007/s10611-007-9061-9

Cited by 74 publications

(25 citation statements)

References 12 publications

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“…Cyberterrorism is defined as an act that is motivated politically, socially, economically, or religiously to threaten or harm an outside party with the intent of creating fear or destroying assets using cyber systems (Stohl, 2006). Cyberterrorism stems from a rational choice evaluation in which the cost of taking action is low in comparison to the benefits (e.g., terrorists begin attacking via cyber systems as an efficient alternative to traditional [physical] actions; Stohl, 2014).…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Characterizing and Measuring Maliciousness for Cybersecurity Risk Assessment

et al. 2018

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Cyber attacks have been increasingly detrimental to networks, systems, and users, and are increasing in number and severity globally. To better predict system vulnerabilities, cybersecurity researchers are developing new and more holistic approaches to characterizing cybersecurity system risk. The process must include characterizing the human factors that contribute to cyber security vulnerabilities and risk. Rationality, expertise, and maliciousness are key human characteristics influencing cyber risk within this context, yet maliciousness is poorly characterized in the literature. There is a clear absence of literature pertaining to human factor maliciousness as it relates to cybersecurity and only limited literature relating to aspects of maliciousness in other disciplinary literatures, such as psychology, sociology, and law. In an attempt to characterize human factors as a contribution to cybersecurity risk, the Cybersecurity Collaborative Research Alliance (CSec-CRA) has developed a Human Factors risk framework. This framework identifies the characteristics of an attacker, user, or defender, all of whom may be adding to or mitigating against cyber risk. The maliciousness literature and the proposed maliciousness assessment metrics are discussed within the context of the Human Factors Framework and Ontology. Maliciousness is defined as the intent to harm. Most maliciousness cyber research to date has focused on detecting malicious software but fails to analyze an individual’s intent to do harm to others by deploying malware or performing malicious attacks. Recent efforts to identify malicious human behavior as it relates to cybersecurity, include analyzing motives driving insider threats as well as user profiling analyses. However, cyber-related maliciousness is neither well-studied nor is it well understood because individuals are not forced to expose their true selves to others while performing malicious attacks. Given the difficulty of interviewing malicious-behaving individuals and the potential untrustworthy nature of their responses, we aim to explore the maliciousness as a human factor through the observable behaviors and attributes of an individual from their actions and interactions with society and networks, but to do so we will need to develop a set of analyzable metrics. The purpose of this paper is twofold: (1) to review human maliciousness-related literature in diverse disciplines (sociology, economics, law, psychology, philosophy, informatics, terrorism, and cybersecurity); and (2) to identify an initial set of proposed assessment metrics and instruments that might be culled from in a future effort to characterize human maliciousness within the cyber realm. The future goal is to integrate these assessment metrics into holistic cybersecurity risk analyses to determine the risk an individual poses to themselves as well as other networks, systems, and/or users.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Effects-based terrorism is a form of hostile aggression in which the behavior is a reaction to being insulted or threatened, in perception or in reality (Stohl, 2006). The attacker’s motives are fear and ideology; attackers use ingroup and outgroup activity to prove how human interaction can lead to violence toward outgroup members.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Characterizing and Measuring Maliciousness for Cybersecurity Risk Assessment

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“…These attacks prevented servers from answering network connections and crashed computers, causing a blue screen to appear. See also Stohl (2006). 11 On 18 March 1998, federal criminal charges were unsealed against a computer hacker who had disabled a key telephone company computer servicing Worcester airport.…”

Section: Cyber Terrorismmentioning

confidence: 99%

Strategic Issues in Air Transport

Abeyratne¹

2012

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“…I will not discuss cyberpiracy, which is in many respects a different and contentious form of cybercrime, nor cybersex crimes, which is treated elsewhere in this volume (Cuijpers & Van der Knaap, 2010). Also omitted are cyberterrorism and cyberwarfare (Denning, 2001;Stohl, 2007;Brenner, 2009) , which are forms of cyberattacks with elements of crime, but which have a different context than the classic crime perspective taken in this chapter.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Internet and its Opportunities for Cybercrime

Koops

2010

SSRN Journal

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The Internet deserves special attention in criminology as well as criminal law and policy, because of several characteristics: it is global, instantaneous, intrinsically transborder, digital, and enables automated information processing. Because of these characteristics, the Internet provides special opportunities to commit cybercrimes: crimes in which computer networks are the target or a substantial tool. This chapter provides a concise review of literature that has investigated how and why the Internet provides special opportunities to commit crime, and what this implies for the governance of (cyber)crime. It sketches some typologies of cybercrime, and lists 12 risk factors of the Internet that in combination provide a unique opportunity structure for crime. Next, the chapter discusses what little is known of cybercriminals, organised cybercrime, and cybervictims, and briefly discusses the challenges and limitations of law enforcement and other countermeasures. Although empirical research on cybercrime is scarce, the theoretical insights and hypotheses advanced in the literature warrant the conclusion that the Internet is transforming crime. It is suggested that cybercrime is becoming organised, large-scale, diversified with increasing division of labour, and is expected to develop increasing ties with offline organised crime. Moreover, offline and online victimisation seem to show significant overlap for some crimes. Now that Internet use has become a routine activity in everyday life, criminology as well as criminal law and policy should also incorporate the Internet and cybercrime in their own routine activities, while paying attention to the peculiarities and complexities of the unique phenomenon that is the Internet.

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Cyber terrorism: a clear and present danger, the sum of all fears, breaking point or patriot games?

Cited by 74 publications

References 12 publications

Characterizing and Measuring Maliciousness for Cybersecurity Risk Assessment

Characterizing and Measuring Maliciousness for Cybersecurity Risk Assessment

Strategic Issues in Air Transport

The Internet and its Opportunities for Cybercrime

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