IT chiefs warn of cyber-terrorism threat

KUALA LUMPUR (AFP) — The threat of cyber-terrorism is growing and most countries are vulnerable to attacks that can shut down critical infrastructure, global experts told a conference here Tuesday.
“The hard reality is that (information technology) has become a tool for cybercrime and cyberterrorism,” said Hamadoun Toure from the United Nations’ International Telecommunications Union.
“Cybersecurity must be the cornerstone of every aspect of keeping ourselves, our countries and our world safe,” he told the conference, which the Malaysian hosts are billing as the first on cyber-terrorism and security.
Toure dismissed as a dangerous myth the idea that events in the virtual world have only a limited impact on the physical world, saying that technology has “changed the dynamics of terrorism”.
Small groups or even individuals are capable of gaining control of millions of computers “which can be used, for instance, to launch denial-of-service attacks on a nation’s critical infrastructure,” he said.

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