Cyber Crime and Cyber Terrorism

10
CHAPTER 1
Cyberspace: The new frontier for policing?
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(14), 211.
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Unit Bulletin 39, 58, Home Office Science & Technology Group, London.
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in the UK. Oxford J. Policing 4 (1), 2–3.
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Strategies and Developing Options for U.S. Policy. National Research Council, The 
National Academies Press, Washington, DC, pp. 207–223.

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CHAPTER
11
2
Definitions of Cyber 
Terrorism
Eric Luiijf
INTRODUCTION
The phrase cyber terror appeared for the first time in the mid-eighties. According 
to several sources, Barry C. Collin, a senior person research fellow of the Institute 
for Security and Intelligence in California, defined cyber terror at that time as “the 
convergence of cybernetics and terrorism”—an elegant and simple definition. That 
definition, however, was not specific enough to make a clear distinction with terms 
like cybercrime, cyber activism (hacktivism), and cyber extremism.
The first glimpses of the cyber revolution, the next wave after the industrial revo-
lution, were much debated in the eighties (e.g., 
Toffler, 1980
). It was therefore no 
surprise that the first discussions were raised in that decade about cyber terror and 
terrorism in the envisioned new world. In the nineties, the debate about the cyber 
revolution widened to phenomenon such as information warfare and information su-
periority. That reinforced the idea again that terrorists could enter cyberspace and 
use that as a domain for terroristic actions. This idea was reflected by the 
National 
Research Council (1991)
: “Tomorrow’s terrorist may be able to do more damage 
with a keyboard than with a bomb.” As a result, cyber terrorism was added to the list 
of serious national threats to the United States.
The unexpected outcome of the 1993 battle of Mogadishu (
Bowden, 1999
) 
showed the potential of an asymmetric threat with a major political impact, and with 
the millennium uncertainties, further widened the societal uncertainty about a pos-
sible terrorist initiated risk from cyberspace for the public. Since then, the term cyber 
terror has helped to create dramatic and attention grabbing newspaper headlines. 
This chapter subsequently asserts that, based on a definition developed from previ-
ous definitions, the world has not yet experienced a real cyber terror impacting event.