HACKERS AND TERRORISTS

Hackers and Terrorists. The Internet is used extensively as a publication medium by hackers (including hacktivists) and terrorists. Hackers publish electronic magazines and put up web sites with software tools and information about hacking, including details about vulnerabilities in popular systems (e.g., Microsoft Windows) and how they can be exploited, programs for cracking passwords, software packages for writing computer viruses, and scripts for disabling or breaking into computer networks and web sites. In March 1997, an article in The New York Times reported that there were an estimated 1,900 web sites purveying hacking tips and tools, and 30 hacker publications.

Terrorist groups use the Internet to spread propaganda. Back in February 1998, Hizbollah was operating three web sites: one for the central press office (www.hizbollah.org), another to describe its attacks on Israeli targets (www.moqawama.org), and the third for news and information (www.almanar.com.lb). That month, Clark Staten, executive director of the Emergency Response & Research Institute (ERRI) in Chicago, testified before a U.S. Senate subcommittee that “even small terrorist groups are now using the Internet to broadcast their message and misdirect/misinform the general population in multiple nations simultaneously.” He gave the subcommittee copies of both domestic and international messages containing antiAmerican and anti-Israeli propaganda and threats, including a widely distributed extremist call for jihad (holy war) against America and Great Britain. In June 1998, U.S. News & World Report noted that 12 of the 30 groups on the U.S. State Department’s list of terrorist organizations are on the web. As of August 1999, it appears that virtually every terrorist group is on the web, along with a mishmash of freedom fighters, crusaders, propagandists, and mercenaries.Forcing them off the web is impossible, because they can set up their sites in countries with free-speech laws. The government of Sri Lanka, for example, banned the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, but they have not even attempted to take down their London-based web site.

Dialogue

The Internet offers several venues for dialogue and debate on policy issues. These include email, newsgroups, web forums, and chat. Discussions can be confined to closed groups, for example through email, as well as open to the public. Some media sites offer web surfers the opportunity to comment on the latest stories and current issues and events. Government officials and domain experts may be brought in to serve as catalysts for discussion, debate issues, or answer questions. Discussion can even take place on web sites that themselves lack such facilities. Using Gooey software from the Israeli company Hypernix, for example, visitors to a web site can chat with other Gooey users currently at the site.

Internet discussion forums are frequently used to debate, blast, and maybe even attempt to influence government policies. Encryption policy, for example, is discussed on the email lists “cypherpunks” and “ukcrypto” and on several newsgroups, including alt.privacy and sci.crypt.

The ukcrypto list was created in early 1996 by two academics, Ross Anderson (Cambridge) and Paul Leyland (Oxford), and one person then in government, Brian Gladman (NATO SHAPE), who was acting outside his official capacity. Motivated by a concern that a lack of public discussion and debate in the United Kingdom on cryptography issues was allowing the government to set policies.

BY MWINYIJUMA REHEMA

BAPRM III - 42686