Cyber Crime and Cyber Terrorism

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CHAPTER 10
Terrorist use of the internet
As a conclusion, crypto currencies will be very attractive to terrorist organiza-
tions when it will reach a combination of high anonymity or low traceability (to pre-
vent identification of transaction senders/receivers), currency stability (to minimize 
the risk of loss of money invested into the crypto currency) and flexibility (variety of 
options to cash in/out the crypto currency into real money).
DARKNET
In the early 2000, some developments have seen emerging alternate networks run-
ning in parallel to the Internet. The original purpose of these was to help people un-
der oppressive regimes and without free-speech to be able to communicate—giving 
them increased anonymity and the ability to bypass their national surveillance.
Such networks provide traffic anonymization between a client and a server but 
also permit to develop/host Hidden Services such as web services, file exchange, 
blogging, chatting hidden from the Internet. Consequently such an opportunity has 
attracted not only oppressed people but also criminals and terrorist that found through 
those networks a new way of exchanging information, and spreading knowledge, etc.
Today there are two main anonymous network: TOR (The Onion Router) the 
oldest, and I2P. Unlike social networks and forums/blogs where terrorist groups use 
to advertise, claim attack responsibilities and recruit on the Internet, the darknet net-
works are used to provide specific content such as videos and training materials that 
can be found on TOR Hidden Services.
3D PRINTING
Though not a direct use of the Internet, 3D printing is becoming available to the 
wider public. This technology has already been proven to produce weapons such as 
knives and guns. The Internet in these instances is generally used to find virtual ob-
jects or 3D blueprints. Singular or multiple objects can be created. Though the weap-
ons created are quite primitive, the advantage is that they are undetectable through 
current airport security check controls. For instance an Israeli reporter made a test by 
printing a gun and went successfully through the security of the Knesset and was able 
to pull it out in front of the prime minister (
Egozi, 2013
).
In 2013, Police found gun parts while searching houses (
DeZeen Magazine, 
2013
). It can be expected in the near future that there will be a steep progression 
in the quality and possibilities of 3D printing as well as the multiplication of avail-
able blueprints. Already, some websites are providing search engines and/or torrent 
search for 3D blueprints. For instance, DEFCAD, a website dedicated to hosting 
blueprint designs has clearly decided to restrict designs that can produce harmful 
products like guns. Though this website has been formally asked by the Department 
of State Office of Defense Trade Controls to withdraw those blueprints, it is already 
too late as the blueprints in question where downloaded thousands of time during the 
time frame it was available. And inevitably, those blueprints can now been found on 
peer-to-peer networks and on The Pirate Bay.

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