The potential threat of cyber-terrorism to Europe : is the EU's response adequate?

Abstract

In 1970 the first cyber-crimes were carried out across telephone lines, by a group of electronics enthusiasts known as ''phone phreakers". They had studied the US telephone system and realized that it used a series of musical tones to connect calls. They found they could imitate those tones and make free phone calls, by creating small musical devices called "blue boxes" In March, 2000 a joint operation by the FBI and the UK police lead to the arrest of a computer hacker who calls himself "Curador". He was charged and subsequently convicted of stealing the details of 26,000 credit cards from various e-commerce websites worldwide, which he proceeded to post elsewhere on the Internet. The cost of his activities was estimated at $3 million (£1.8 million). Curador's real name was Raphael Gray; he was 18 years old. On the 4th May 2000 a computer "worm" called "Love Bug" rapidly infected computers worldwide. It used infected machines to e-mail itself to other users, corrupting files on computers as it went. Within hours, millions of computers were affected, including those of UK and US government agencies. The damage caused by the "Love Bug" was placed at between $7 billion and $10 billion. The prime suspect was Onel de Guzman a 24-year old collage dropout from the Philippines. In August 2000 all charges against de Guzman were dropped -the Philippines simply did not have law that covered computer hacking under which he could be trialed and convicted. On the 11th February 2003, FBI Director Robert Mueller told the US Senate that "cyber terrorism" was a growing threat to US national security. He claimed that Al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups were becoming "increasingly computer savvy" and would, in the future, have ever greater opportunities to strike by targeting critical computer systems using electronic tools.