My paranoia last month may have been justified. I wrote about the Occupy London protesters wanting to camp out near the London Stock Exchange (LSE) and the cyber-attacks between Israeli and Arab hackers as harbingers of more trouble to come. It looks as if not only was I was right but there needs to be a renewed vigilance to fend off what is likely to be a steady flow of terrorists and hackers targeting financial centers, trading venues and financial services firms.
The good news is that major counter-terrorism operations have been performing near-miracles. In London yesterday, The Wall Street Journal and others reported that four British men, inspired by al Qaeda, pleaded guilty to charges that they intended to bomb the LSE in 2010. Five more defendants also pleaded guilty to additional terror-related charges. Authorities arrested the nine British citizens in December 2010 after a major counter-terror operation in the UK. Apparently, the defendants also had plans to target Westminster Abbey, Big Ben and the US embassy. Authorities said that by the time the defendants were arrested they had yet to create bombs or establish days and times for the attacks.
So, while many of us have been distracted by other pressing matters such as the Great Recession and the recovery, the terrorists haven’t lost their focus. And neither have the hackers.
The WSJ also reported yesterday that cyber-attacks shut down the websites of two Brazilian banks—Itaú Unibanco and Banco Bradesco—apparently by the Anti-Security Brazilian Team, which in association with iPiratesGroup, is taking aim at Brazil’s top five banks. They are also targeting airlines, telephone companies, credit card companies, government websites and radio station transmissions. The members of the hacking groups say they are fighting for economic justice and not creating havoc for personal gain. One of the statements proclaims, “Everyone has an honest job! Look, we have plenty of knowledge to carry out frauds … lol, but we’re not thieves!” Well, not yet, anyways.
The attacks are a preview of what the hackers are capable of and are meant as a warning of far worse consequences to come. These and other hackings are further confirmation that pressure groups and terrorists can come from all corners.
In fact, a study from the University of Maryland via the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START) has tracked the ebbs and flows of terrorism in the US from 1970 to 2008. The study found that nearly one-third of all terrorist attacks in that time occurred in five metropolitan US counties: Manhattan (343 attacks); Los Angeles County, Calif. (156 attacks); Miami-Dade County, Fla. (103 attacks); San Francisco County, Calif. (99 attacks) and Washington, D.C. (79 attacks). In total, the study revealed that 65 of 3,143 US counties could be classified as “hot spots,” which are defined by START researchers as counties with a higher than average number of terrorist attacks—more than six from 1970 to 2008.
The report, funded in part by the US Department of Homeland Security, has also identified time trends and geographic concentrations in terrorist attacks.
“The 1970s were dominated by extreme left-wing terrorist attacks,” said Bianca Bersani, assistant professor of sociology at the University of Massachusetts-Boston and co-author of the report with Gary LaFree, director of START. “Far left-wing terrorism in the U.S. is almost entirely limited to the 1970s with few events in the 1980s and virtually no events after that.” Ethno-national/separatist terrorism hit in the 1970s and 1980s while religiously motivated attacks occurred predominantly in the 1980s, according to the study. Extreme right-wing terrorism was concentrated in the 1990s and single issue attacks were dispersed across the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s.
So, in the second decade of the 21st Century I suspect the current wave of terrorist acts and hackings will come from the right via religious extremists and the left from people in economic desperation.
What is more disturbing is that there is very little discussion among those in the media and in the political realm about terrorism—cyber or otherwise. There is also scant exploration of the evils of hacking and cyberpunks. We seem to be experiencing a sad mix of fear, complacency and fatalism that is self-defeating. The only seed of hope is that some firms and branches of government have gotten the message and are vigilant about terrorism and cyber-attacks. But the vigilance has to spread and has to be more than full-body scans at airports.
The major mainstream media outlets have got to pay more attention to how the terrorist and hacking threats are evolving. As we’re in the throes of a presidential election, it would be the right time to hash out what more the government and society should be doing to protect not only financial centers and financial services firms but all facets of our world. It would be better than another annoying, content-free story about the Republican horse race for front-runner status.
Need a Reprint?
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