Attacks on Our Computers by Terrorists Are Becoming More Frequent

I grew up in the sixties. My generation thought that the world was going to blow up from a nuclear bomb at any time. We had those black and yellow signs with the radioactive symbols on them all over my school. I remember drills that we did so we would know what to do in case of a nuclear attack. Get under your desk was the advice. That school desk must have been magical to be able to protect you from a nuclear bomb.

Our enemy in the Cold War, the Soviet Union, went under without a bang, but rather a whimper. It was the economy that got them, not a bomb blast. And it might just be our economy that gets us in the end as well. But there is another threat that is just as serious. The world as we know it just may end with a blue screen.

We worry about terrorists lurking around every corner when they just might be lurking in our computers. "Microterrorism" has been on the increase lately and the government has been struggling to stay one step ahead of the people who try to sabotage our computers and databases. According to CNN:

"Foreign policy has made less news. Iraq is dysfunctional but stable; Afghanistan is unstable but no more so than before. Relations between the U.S. and the rest of the world are in reasonable shape. So it might sound odd to call this the year of terrorism. But it was."

The number of cyber attacks against the United States over the past twelve months has exceeded the number in any other one-year period. Take the attempt to blow up cargo holds with printer-cartridge bombs, for example.

And it's not just in the United States that this is happening, but rather in most countries around the world. These kinds of attacks on Russian territories have doubled over the past year.

This has all led to a new term: "microterrorism." Instead of big displays of terrorism like the attack on the World Trade Center, these cyber-attacks are small and more likely to succeed. So far we have been lucky.

If the hacker terrorists are able to get into some of the computers that run our key defense systems or key economics such as banking, we definitely have the potential for major trouble just as if bombs were going off.

Al-Qaeda is even saying that the best way to defeat the enemy (us) is to slowly bleed us to death with these attacks. This terrorist organization has always said in the past that to get the world's attention, they needed to mount large attacks like 911. But now in this age where computers practically run everything, their philosophy has changed.

Even though the amount of damage a few individuals can mount is relatively small right now, we can't rest assured that they may get more sophisticated in the future. And what's really scary is that in the future, a lot of these attacks may come from inside our own country.

Source: http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2036683_2037181_2037470,00.html?hpt=C2