Terrorism: The US Cyber Threat

U.S. Cyber Threat

It is up to every single citizen in a nation to protect the way of life they love and have grown accustomed to. Threats upon this way of life are not only dealt with by the government officials appointed to monitor them. The responsibility of sustaining a healthy and safe nation falls upon the shoulders of every citizen within the borders, or simply citizens with any interests inside the borders. Some threats may be much easier to identify than others. Even with every citizen doing their part to help safeguard our nation, there are so many different type of security threats, spotting them will always be a challenge. This wide array of possibilities could range from a homegrown “vigilante” that feels that their local big business …show more content…
Looking at a homegrown terrorist, their ways of enforcing their movement may be much more primitive. They may simply obtain a firearm and fire upon a public area to try and draw attention to their cause. Looking at the larger groups, they have much larger capabilities. They have the ability to organize large-scale attacks, able to inflict a lot of damage upon a larger group of people. Whether that damage is physical or even emotional, it can have a much larger influence than a more primitive approach can. One of the newest, but fastest evolving type of terroristic threat to the United States specifically is a type of cyber-attack. Already pointing out the wide scope of possible terroristic threats, this also pertains to the many ways cyber criminals can hurt the U.S. people. To quote a sadistic, but highly intelligent American literature artist in Marilyn Manson “In a sense, terrorism blossomed in the advent of television. Television promotes terrorism in religion and in politics.”. Of course, terrorism has been around for decades upon decades, but the newest technology along with the media tends to promote new and more radical …show more content…
This attack was not even carried out on U.S. soil, but still goes down as the biggest “breach of military networks” to date. What we now know as a program by the name of “agent.biz” is scripted to spread from one computer to every other computer in a certain network, just as the Shamoon virus was coded to do to Aramco. The agent.biz virus made its way into the American military networks by simple USB flash drive. It was never released how, but somehow the USB containing the virus was inserted into a computer on an American military base in the middle east. Once the virus made its way in it was able to get into the systems of U.S. Central Command. This is the entire strategic system on how the U.S. was going about the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. It is obvious to see the importance of the files the virus uncovered. The U.S. claims to have found the culprit of these specific attacks, but still refuses to reveal this information. Of course, much of the media has speculated that the Russian government was behind the attacks. This speculation is backed by the fact that the origin of the virus was from Russia. This is not reliable because that any type of virus like this, or even your home computer if you want, can have it’s origin scrambled. This makes it impossible to retrace the steps back to where the software truly