On Sat, 23 Dec 2000, dmolnar wrote:
I can think of two terrorist attacks on U.S. soil without too much difficulty: the World Trade Center and Oklahoma City.
In both cases, computers and "internet" loosely defined played a minor organizational role. McVeigh used AOL, and the Trade Center bombers had some plans on a floppy disk.
Have we had any instance of "cyber terrorism" -- you know, the kind of awful scenario which most people reading this could cook up without too much difficulty. or is the question not well formed since if it was a successful attack, we wouldn't know?
There are always hints about such a thing supposedly happening. When you press for details, it becomes very hard to find anything resembling actual incidents. The "Cyber Terrorism" scare is just that. A scare. It is a way for various government agencies to justify their insane budgets. I expect we will have a few real incidents in the near future, but I expect they will be like the rash of cases a few years ago involving supposed Anthrax attacks. Lots of cases where fake anthrax attacks were supposedly staged. (Conviently in public places where people would find them before hand.) No real indication of the real thing. I expect if we do have a "Cyber Pearl Harbor" it will be from some government agency (probably the FBI) trying to work up the funding to "protect" us. alan@ctrl-alt-del.com | Note to AOL users: for a quick shortcut to reply Alan Olsen | to my mail, just hit the ctrl, alt and del keys. "In the future, everything will have its 15 minutes of blame."