Terror moves into the digital age

Source: a href=”http://www.theaustralian.com.au/politics/terror-moves-into-the-digital-age/story-e6frgczf-1225841555397″>Sally Neighbour

TERRORISTS are about to vent their fury on Australia with an attack that will reveal a diabolical new dimension to the terrorist threat. In a prelude designed to cripple the country’s defences, an all-out cyber assault is unleashed.

First, the Defence Department’s internal communications system is paralysed by botnets, networks of thousands of zombie computers, hijacked in cyberspace and now remote-controlled by the enemy. Next, radar stations are jammed to give foreign aircraft unrestricted access to Australian airspace. Fighter jets deployed by the Australian air force are electronically commandeered by firewall-penetrating software injected in advance into their avionics systems. Maritime defences are immobilised by electronic interference that confounds the ships’ communication systems. Communication links with the fleet are in enemy hands when all the satellite transponders are hijacked.

A hypothetical such as this, once the stuff of futuristic Hollywood fiction, is being seriously envisaged by strategic analysts, who see the risk of cyber attack as the most disturbing new threat to national security.

Australia’s leading electronic spy agency, the Defence Signals Directorate, says cyber threats posed by terrorists, malicious hackers and organised criminals are “huge and multiplying”.