Page 154 - Cyber Terrorism and Extremism as Threat to Critical Infrastructure Protection

SECTION II: CYBER TERRORISM AND SECURITY IMPLICATION FOR CRITICAL INFRASTRUCTURE PROTECTION

Finally, it was found that the psychological operations were expressed through web portals
and online simulations as a segment of cyber warfare which was funded through bank funds
in Sacramento, California, which greatly helped to unite the Chechen Diasporas to end this
cyber war as soon as possible (Thomas, 2002).

During the Second Russo-Chechen Cyber War from 1997-2001, numerous military records

of assassinations of Chechen and Russian soldiers mounted on both sides appeared on the
internet and official Russian and Chechen web portals.

The Russian authorities, on the other hand, conducted cyber attacks by hacking Chechen web-
sites. The Russian Federal Security Service (FSB), with the Russian Special Forces ”Spetsnaz”,
were responsible for preventing two Chechen web portals from operating (Bullough, 2002).
This was internet psychological propaganda between the nations. What we can conclude, is
that the Chechens’ internet propaganda proved more successful. Digital videos and pictures of
how a civilian Chechen bus was attacked by pro-Russian separatists with many of the passen-
gers killed, and the activities in ambushes by Chechen militias on Russian military convoys,
are just some of the propaganda material on internet web portals during 1999, which were
officially denied by Russia.

The Kosovo crisis of 1999 is considered to be one of the first more sophisticated information
wars. NATO prepared to carry out its air campaign in Serbia by bombing critical infrastruc-
ture targets in order to bring the country into collapse, thereby forcing Serbia to withdraw
from Kosovo. Numerous hacker groups emerged, notably the “Black Hand”, which launched
serious cyber attacks on NATO’s official and secret internet infrastructure. Unfortunately, al-
though it cannot be confirmed with certainty, it is assumed that some of the hackers were from
the Yugoslav Army. Their goal was more than clear to disable the NATO air military opera-
tions on critical infrastructure in Serbia. It is also assumed that the NATO missile incident at
the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade was definitely the work of Serbian hackers, who managed
to change the missile’s flight, coordinates from its launch to the target (Bosnian Serb News
Agency, 1999).

During September 2000, young Israeli hackers were able to hack into several Hezbollah and
Hamas websites in Lebanon. The hackers attacked the operating systems of web portals and
successfully penetrated and gave fake news through six web portals to: Hezbollah, Hamas and
other organizations in Lebanon, as well as the Palestinian national authorities. This seemingly
minor cyber attack escalated into an international incident. The Palestinian and other Islamic
organizations called it”a holy cyber war” (The Associated Press, 2000). The hackers carried
out cyber attacks against 3 high-ranking Israeli websites belonging to the Israeli Parliament,
the Foreign Ministry and the Israeli Defence Forces. Later, they also launched a cyber attack
on the office of the Israeli Prime Minister, the Bank of Israel and the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange.
By January 2001, the cyber conflict had affected more than 160 Israeli and 35 Palestinian
major web portals.

About 548 domains of Israeli websites were hacked in the Middle East. The most common

cyber attacks were websites malfunctions and operating system attacks. Cyber attacks on tel-
ecommunication companies were also carried out. Palestinian hackers succeeded in destroy-
ing Israel’s Net Vision, which supplied about 70% of the national internet communications.

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