Cyber Terrorism- How can we safeguard ourselves?

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Permalink Reply by B. M. Kiula on September 14, 2009 at 7:37am

I think, one way is to go back to the basics! Love for the neighbour as for for the self. There is no single culture that I have come across that supported acts of violence in its practice. I suppose none ever would condone cyber-terrorism.

Secondly, partakers of the goodies of cyberspace need to exercise a greater level of caution. That includes implementing measures of combating crime, treating information coming from unconfirmed sources with higher caution. Major outlets such as CNN, BBC as herein referred should conduct background checks prior to airing any information that is likely to cause civil unrest.

Finally, because we have fallen short of trust, we ought to evaluate ourselves; our passions and aspirations, our thoughts and actions, our opportunities and choices, our rights and responsibilities and find that which we do as we enjoy the products of ICT and see in what ways we could be terrorists and therefore choose that which would enrich each other rather than harm lives and property.

The solution is not in the galaxies. It is here with us. Each one of us has a role to play. Perhaps his sounds naive but what would be better than a docility that can ease the dangers of cyber-terrorism?

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Permalink Reply by Dr. Mouna Jebeile on September 14, 2009 at 8:15am

I agree with Mr B.M.Kiula .
When receiving messages both emmitter and receptor are in action / reaction.
As pasteur metaphorically said : It is not the virus only ,which is virulant , it is the substance on which it breeds , which is weak.
Vaccination is one way of protecting the self from bombardement of the media .
Doubting , and wielding a free-will , and teaching others to use their free will , to tell truths from lies = wisdom .
It might take a long time to teach the mass to distinguish . But life is not an emergency room which ends when we die , it is a continuation of an attitude from generation to generation . it is a proccess .
Being terrorised is reacting to a stimulus the terrorist wants . Becoming stronger as a mass is one way of acting with a combined force . I only have to teach 3 and the three pass it on to become a huge number etc . If this too is naive then we can survive by being naiive and trusting in God to protect the innocent .
by simple common sense .

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Permalink Reply by MUWAYI IDDI on September 14, 2009 at 11:25am

Hello friend,
I think will take some good time to go through this topic an' will then have to share my view as regards to it ok. It's a very nice kind of discussion topic to be tabled my dear.

Cheers
MUWAYI IDDI
UGANDA.

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Permalink Reply by Dr. Barbara Fedock on September 14, 2009 at 3:29pm

Seuwandi,

In an uncertain world, the best ways is to use Cyberterrorism Preventions Lists that are based on research. Barbara Fedock

Here are some suggestions:
1) If our systems use MAC addresses, it is very easy for terrorist to change a MAC address on a system to gain entry.
2) If a system relies on WEP to protect data, do not rely on WEP. It is open to compromise.
3) If our systems use default configuration files, change the default SSID to something that is very hard to guess.
4) If the Telecenter does not use a strong user authentication, implement an authentication system that mandates that both computers and users be authenticated before they can use wireless resources.
5) We might want to encrypt data. Encrypted data is difficult to access.
6) We should examine how we are monitoring wireless LAns for hijackers. Audits might be needed, as well as tools that ensure that only authenticated users and systems are using our wireless networks.
7) We should make sure that wireless traffic is controlled and away from sensitive systems or wired LANS.

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Permalink Reply by Zahanzeb Altamas Pasha on September 14, 2009 at 11:19pm

It is an important and excellent article. You should write more on the issue.

My best regards

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Permalink Reply by Bipas on September 14, 2009 at 11:56pm

Thank Seuwandi

It is an important and excellent article.


Bipas
Bangladesh

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Permalink Reply by Seuwandi Yapa on September 15, 2009 at 12:08am

Thank you very much for all your inputs :)
I agree with Kiula, as one of the major solution for cyber terrorism is International corporation. I believe, whole world should consider this issue seriously and must work together in preventing cyber terrorism.
What is the need of International Corporation in preventing Cyber Terrorism?
Apart from the difficulties of preventing cyber terrorim that I have mentioned in my introductory note:
legal provisions against terrorist activities through internet is not sufficient to prevent the threat. Also, it is not at an easy task to trace the terrorist groups, as they have many hideouts available for them in internet.

And I really appreciate Barbara's contribution in this discussion.. :))))
The solutions suggested really helpful to safeguard ourselves specially in personal level and in telecentre level as well.

Thank you all again for your feed back and I hope you will further add your comments on the topic.
:)))))

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Permalink Reply by Desabandu K P Shanmuganathan j p on September 15, 2009 at 12:45am

worm welcome for the attempt you have taken we srilankan we must prove the international community that what is happening in our country if we can prove to the globe no body cant do any anti propaganda against our country anyhow we can discuss further on this subject shan

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Permalink Reply by Francis Mwathi on September 16, 2009 at 3:29am

Policies at national, regional and global levels would also have an impact in controlling e-crime.

For example with the roll out of fibre optic cables, East Africa is now exposed to both local and international cyber attacks. A Regional harmonisation of information and technology policies is another move that can be employed against the looming threat of e-crime.

The expected faster connectivity and more bandwidth capacity is likely to see more firms increase their online presence, leading to a rise on e-attacks given that most companies and individuals lack adequate security measures. The East Africa Community member states should kick off co-ordinated consumer awareness.
Failure to harmonise the policies means that an attack can be committed from a country which does not have cyber laws making it difficult for the country that have these laws in place to apprehend the attacker or take legal action against criminal.

While it is good to have policies at the country level, if they are not harmonised and the public is not educated then addressing the cyber attacks still remain a challenge.

The challenge, however, remains how countries will be able to harmonise regional ICT policies which are currently at different stages of either being implemented or formulated.

Although some countries have moved steps forward by recognising electronic crimes, there is need to put a mechanism to link the country courts with the rest in the world and enforcement bodies if the country has to succeed in addressing the cyber crime .

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Permalink Reply by Indika Perera on September 16, 2009 at 6:42am

Threats can be either External or Internal. If we take the statistics, more vulnerable is your internal stakeholders; they may not know anything about the attack but have been exploited by an external attacker, which is the most common scenario. If you have decent technology measures to safeguard from Direct External attacks, as far as your internal stakeholders keep the security basics (Confidentiality, Integrity and Accountability) on tight, you can have a good night sleep, nothing ensures 100% security, though. If you have internal weak points, those must be addressed soon to ensure attack safeguards. This is very high level view of proactive security measures against cyber crimes; even we sometimes have to have reactive measures when a threat occurs with a complete new approach.
If you take the direct external attacks, that is more out of your hand, DoS (Denial of Service), DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attacks are more prominent which require low level (OSI stack) safety measures to safeguard at most. It is sometimes difficult to safeguard as attackers appear to be simple authentic server requests. Researches are still going on to develop advance hardware and software level protection for DoS family attacks but for the time being you have to rely on combined strategies of different proactive measures. Unless it affects your hardware (firmware), simple server restart can overcome the situation, but the missed server access time for clients, is a non-recoverable damage.

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Permalink Reply by Francis Mwathi on September 17, 2009 at 2:23am

The following response came via the UgaBYTES mailing list:

Are you sure about this? It seems like "Orwellian Newspeak" to me.

With reference to the specific case cited to justify the concern about the threat of cyberterrorism, how do we know this is not the governments effort to cleverly disguise what some allege as its brutal tactics and human rights abuses in repressing the rebellion by the Tamils?

I thought I had multiple reports about this being an issue and that the issue was being raised by International authorities including human rights orgs.

The "damage of the reputation of Sri Lankan government forces" was due I thought to its hasty movement into Tamil controlled areas that had scores of Tamils and risked many of their lives by using heavy artillery to purge the area of the Tamil fighters and its general ruthlessless in the campaign to finally root out the Tamil resistence in their last bastion/stronghold.

Regardless I think the definition of Cyberterrorism is much broader than this government friendly definition. Possibly the report is biased and it gives the appearance of not discussing this issue of terrorism in a balanced and fair way. In particular what we have seen after sept 11 2001 is the an increase in state conrolled and manufactured propaganda about terrorism. That includes taking advantages of the a climate of fear to create a grossly overblown fear of terrorism or attack. This in turn has been to justify more repressive state activities, huge increases in military and intelligence spending and more intrusive practices of monitoring people's activities through surveillance techniques. What's more the so called "War on Terror" conveniently deflects attention from state sponsored repression and that terrorizing of individual, regional, community and minority/ethnic/indigenous group rights by national states through the control and distortion of information in the media as well as through more coercive and repressive means including torture and other forms of human rights abuse..

Jeff Buderer

Could we have somebody from that region guide us on this.

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Permalink Reply by Seuwandi Yapa on September 17, 2009 at 3:00pm

I'm really very sorry, i completely disagree with Jeff Buderer's views. However....
Im really very sorry Francis, my main intention of having this discussion is not to justify the Sri Lankan government or our government forces or their activities. In the introductory, I brought Sri Lanka in to picture, just as a recent example.
Please note that this is not to justify or safeguard Sri Lankan government and its activities, But to consider the threat of "Cyber Terrorism" in general and have a discussion on possible solutions for cyber crimes (which we can use specially in telecentre level)
Therefore I think the guide on this comment will mislead the main purpose of this discussion.
Thank you :)))

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