What is Cyber Terrorism? (Consumer View)
             When you say terrorism many people think of bombing and physical actions taken towards other people. You usually don't think of the internet. Cyber terrorism is one of the largest points of attack in America, simply because people don't think of their computer as a device that can physically harm them. But computers are the main way of taking care of sensitive documents that the government thinks are important to national security. The fact is that an attack on computer technology can cause a great deal of damage. First, however, we must define cyber terrorism. I define cyber terrorism as abuse of computer technology to destroy personal and business information with the intent to harass. That being said, cyber terror is a broad field.
             Government agents consider hackers to be cyber terrorists because they cause pointless acts of destruction. I do not completely agree with that because most hackers are more like a kid wanting to play a joke on their father because it gives them a sense of power. They do not wish to destroy, but to let them know that he was there. Cyber terrorists seek to do so on a larger scale because they want to cause destruction and panic to all those who use computers or to a specific group of people, similar to the events after September 11. Many Americans were downloading patriotic songs, so someone attached a virus to "God Bless America" and "The National Anthem." The virus attached to your virus software. It caused an alert, but would not allow your virus scanner to clean it. The results were your computer freezing up, and if you rebooted, it would not allow Windows to run. This was a popular act of cyber terrorism; many people that I know had to recover all lost documents and information that they had accumulated.
             The areas that we are most vulnerable in are personal computers, government, and private networks (Donthu, Navin (199...