When New York had its first electricity black-out in recent memory in November 1965, President Johnson shot off a stern letter to the city authorities. But when this happened again last August, a worried President Bush, at that time in California, had to assure his people through the media that this was not a terrorist attack on US networks.
Again when Heathrow Airport had to temporarily close down some two months ago for a few hoursbecause its new state-of-the-art computer system collapsed, similar fears would have crossed the minds of the British security and intelligence services. Some techno-savvy terrorist, some criminal sitting somewhere has seen this and absorbed the implications of a computer shutdown at a major airport.
Few could have predicted 15 years ago, the impact this revolution in information technology would have on our way of life and on asymmetric warfare. And few can predict today what kind of scientific revolutions await us. User-friendly and cheap off-the-shelf technology combined with terrorism is a deadly mix.
When the US entered World War II, America’s scientists and engineers enthusiastically joined in to provide its military the scientific and technological edge that ultimately defeated the Germans and the Japanese. Twelve years later, when the Soviets sent a satellite into space, the Americans suddenly realised that they were no longer protected by two oceans. Then began another feverish race for supremacy in all its aspects.
There were at that time demands for faster, safer and secure means of communication. There were requirements for storage and retrieval of mountains of data in real time in a nuclear-tipped missile age. There were demands for accurate long-distance photography and imagery. And, of course, there were demands for smart weapons. Today’s IT revolution and the internet are the result of Pentagon/Nasa demands and both have not run full course yet.
Research was initially fuelled though government spending. Even that has changed, with chip-makers like Intel spending $ 4 billion (about Rs 18,000 crore at today’s rates) annually on R&D because expenditures of this kind meant that the products had to be commercially viable in a stable but a growing and competitive market. This was particularly so after the Cold War had been won and government commissions on the Silicon Valley reduced. Technological innovations now have a life of their own and the time gap between new discoveries and their commercial application is getting shorter. The same facility of the internet, the satellite phone or the cellphone, frequency hoppers and burst transmission equipment is available to the terrorist as to the military. Satellite imagery of target areas can be openly purchased.
There are other far more worrying fears that would haunt any counter-terrorist organisation. The US Department of Defence infrastructure has more than two million computers with 10,000 local area networks and 1,000 long-distance networks. It’s believed that in the Nineties, investigators found an electronic back door into the US Navy’s system, which could theoretically be used by hackers to command the Trident submarines to launch nuclear attacks. Naturally, the more advanced and networked a system, the more vulnerable it is to opposition attacks. Such attacks on Indian websites and networks are more frequent and successful and could be trial runs for the D-Day, if and when it comes. As a growing IT power India has cause for concern.
The other technology-driven fear is that organised criminal groups and terrorist support groups are now using identity fraud attacks called ‘phishing’ on the internet. A ‘phishing’ expedition appears as a genuine e-mail on the net but is actually a trap to obtain passwords and identification numbers. Prominent banks in the US and Britain have been the victims of such attacks and losses are feared to be in millions.
Given the growing links between criminal networks and terrorists this has obvious implications. Terrorists don’t have to cross any physical space any more to coordinate their activities. Their meeting ground is cyberspace and techniques like steganography (micro-dots camouflaged in a photograph as an attachment or in an e-mail) are common. After the Madrid bombings in March, it was discovered that Islamic militants had discussed this on an internet news group called Global Islamic Media for four months.
Terrorists, having succeeded in achieving a change of government in Spain, could try this in the US in the summer. American agencies fear that al-Qaeda has sleepers in the US, while the London-based International Institute of Strategic Studies estimates that there are 18,000 potential al-Qaeda terrorists, with a functioning leadership and operating in 60 countries. The war in Iraq has helped this recruitment. There are growing concerns in the US that al-Qaeda may be planning a ‘dirty bomb’ or use chemical or biological weapons in their next attack.
Across the Atlantic, terrorists may be planning to use chemical weapons and their plans as well as their capability to carry out these attacks is probably now more advanced than earlier assessed. Several of these groups may be linked to Islamic militants in Chechnya. In January this year, the French had arrested five people in a Lyon suburb. One among them had received chemical weapons’ training in Georgia’s Pankisi Gorge and two others admitted that they were planning to use ricin poison and botulinum bacteria. And there was a possible al- Qaeda connection.
Then in April, the British uncovered a plot to use osmium tetroxide, which affects the eyes and skin, in a terrorist attack. Police discovered that the terrorists were in contact with extremists in Pakistan. The French also believe that Lashkar-e-Tayyeba militants have helped develop chemical weapons skills, which are now dispersed within al-Qaeda. Lashkar terrorists have been noticed in Iraq where some of them, including a key operative, Dilshad Ahmed, was picked up by the Americans.
Growing links between terrorists and criminal networks will only complicate the hunt for terrorists. The Madrid bombers sold hashish and ecstasy in exchange for 440 pounds of dynamite. They also used the money earned from trafficking to pay for a safe house, a car andcellphones. Criminal groups, aware that terrorists need commonly available chemicals like ammonium nitrate in bulk, may have been responsible for the recent theft of this fertiliser ingredient in large quantities in Thailand, Norway and Australia. All this happened within a month.
Terrorism is now truly global and as multinational as Microsoft. It is lethal and it is cheap. (The ingredients for sirin gas which, when used properly with a spray, could kill anywhere between a few hundred and a few thousand, cost only $ 150.) There are many players in the field today — the fanatics, the criminals, the drug-traffickers, the human traffickers. The masterminds are not the archetypal villains epitomised by Bollywood, but could be the boy or girl next door in the suburbs of Atlanta or Marseilles or an alumnus from Binori mosque in Karachi.
Future wars are unlikely to engage massive armies locked in prolonged battle for real estate. Attacks could now come by stealth, master-minded by some computer whiz kid along with some science graduate, and the targets are our ways of life. It is a highly unconventional war that the State hopes to fight only with conventional weapons or tactics. Unless the State learns to be flexible and agile and unless there is full scope cooperation internationally, it will always be an uphill struggle with the peak never really visible.
Source : Hindustan Times , 6th July 2004
Again when Heathrow Airport had to temporarily close down some two months ago for a few hoursbecause its new state-of-the-art computer system collapsed, similar fears would have crossed the minds of the British security and intelligence services. Some techno-savvy terrorist, some criminal sitting somewhere has seen this and absorbed the implications of a computer shutdown at a major airport.
Few could have predicted 15 years ago, the impact this revolution in information technology would have on our way of life and on asymmetric warfare. And few can predict today what kind of scientific revolutions await us. User-friendly and cheap off-the-shelf technology combined with terrorism is a deadly mix.
When the US entered World War II, America’s scientists and engineers enthusiastically joined in to provide its military the scientific and technological edge that ultimately defeated the Germans and the Japanese. Twelve years later, when the Soviets sent a satellite into space, the Americans suddenly realised that they were no longer protected by two oceans. Then began another feverish race for supremacy in all its aspects.
There were at that time demands for faster, safer and secure means of communication. There were requirements for storage and retrieval of mountains of data in real time in a nuclear-tipped missile age. There were demands for accurate long-distance photography and imagery. And, of course, there were demands for smart weapons. Today’s IT revolution and the internet are the result of Pentagon/Nasa demands and both have not run full course yet.
Research was initially fuelled though government spending. Even that has changed, with chip-makers like Intel spending $ 4 billion (about Rs 18,000 crore at today’s rates) annually on R&D because expenditures of this kind meant that the products had to be commercially viable in a stable but a growing and competitive market. This was particularly so after the Cold War had been won and government commissions on the Silicon Valley reduced. Technological innovations now have a life of their own and the time gap between new discoveries and their commercial application is getting shorter. The same facility of the internet, the satellite phone or the cellphone, frequency hoppers and burst transmission equipment is available to the terrorist as to the military. Satellite imagery of target areas can be openly purchased.
There are other far more worrying fears that would haunt any counter-terrorist organisation. The US Department of Defence infrastructure has more than two million computers with 10,000 local area networks and 1,000 long-distance networks. It’s believed that in the Nineties, investigators found an electronic back door into the US Navy’s system, which could theoretically be used by hackers to command the Trident submarines to launch nuclear attacks. Naturally, the more advanced and networked a system, the more vulnerable it is to opposition attacks. Such attacks on Indian websites and networks are more frequent and successful and could be trial runs for the D-Day, if and when it comes. As a growing IT power India has cause for concern.
The other technology-driven fear is that organised criminal groups and terrorist support groups are now using identity fraud attacks called ‘phishing’ on the internet. A ‘phishing’ expedition appears as a genuine e-mail on the net but is actually a trap to obtain passwords and identification numbers. Prominent banks in the US and Britain have been the victims of such attacks and losses are feared to be in millions.
Given the growing links between criminal networks and terrorists this has obvious implications. Terrorists don’t have to cross any physical space any more to coordinate their activities. Their meeting ground is cyberspace and techniques like steganography (micro-dots camouflaged in a photograph as an attachment or in an e-mail) are common. After the Madrid bombings in March, it was discovered that Islamic militants had discussed this on an internet news group called Global Islamic Media for four months.
Terrorists, having succeeded in achieving a change of government in Spain, could try this in the US in the summer. American agencies fear that al-Qaeda has sleepers in the US, while the London-based International Institute of Strategic Studies estimates that there are 18,000 potential al-Qaeda terrorists, with a functioning leadership and operating in 60 countries. The war in Iraq has helped this recruitment. There are growing concerns in the US that al-Qaeda may be planning a ‘dirty bomb’ or use chemical or biological weapons in their next attack.
Across the Atlantic, terrorists may be planning to use chemical weapons and their plans as well as their capability to carry out these attacks is probably now more advanced than earlier assessed. Several of these groups may be linked to Islamic militants in Chechnya. In January this year, the French had arrested five people in a Lyon suburb. One among them had received chemical weapons’ training in Georgia’s Pankisi Gorge and two others admitted that they were planning to use ricin poison and botulinum bacteria. And there was a possible al- Qaeda connection.
Then in April, the British uncovered a plot to use osmium tetroxide, which affects the eyes and skin, in a terrorist attack. Police discovered that the terrorists were in contact with extremists in Pakistan. The French also believe that Lashkar-e-Tayyeba militants have helped develop chemical weapons skills, which are now dispersed within al-Qaeda. Lashkar terrorists have been noticed in Iraq where some of them, including a key operative, Dilshad Ahmed, was picked up by the Americans.
Growing links between terrorists and criminal networks will only complicate the hunt for terrorists. The Madrid bombers sold hashish and ecstasy in exchange for 440 pounds of dynamite. They also used the money earned from trafficking to pay for a safe house, a car andcellphones. Criminal groups, aware that terrorists need commonly available chemicals like ammonium nitrate in bulk, may have been responsible for the recent theft of this fertiliser ingredient in large quantities in Thailand, Norway and Australia. All this happened within a month.
Terrorism is now truly global and as multinational as Microsoft. It is lethal and it is cheap. (The ingredients for sirin gas which, when used properly with a spray, could kill anywhere between a few hundred and a few thousand, cost only $ 150.) There are many players in the field today — the fanatics, the criminals, the drug-traffickers, the human traffickers. The masterminds are not the archetypal villains epitomised by Bollywood, but could be the boy or girl next door in the suburbs of Atlanta or Marseilles or an alumnus from Binori mosque in Karachi.
Future wars are unlikely to engage massive armies locked in prolonged battle for real estate. Attacks could now come by stealth, master-minded by some computer whiz kid along with some science graduate, and the targets are our ways of life. It is a highly unconventional war that the State hopes to fight only with conventional weapons or tactics. Unless the State learns to be flexible and agile and unless there is full scope cooperation internationally, it will always be an uphill struggle with the peak never really visible.
Source : Hindustan Times , 6th July 2004
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