Cyber-Terrorism: An Invisible War Against Nations

International Law

In the present technological era, terrorists are terrorizing people and governments with the help of technology. They use technological tools & techniques to attack cyberspace to create fear, disruption, and to cause damage, this is known as Cyber-terrorism. Certain terrorists are choosing cyber-terrorism as their preferred method of terrorism as it is considered to be cost effective and provides anonymity to the terrorists. There are several different forms of Cyber-terrorism like Distributed Denial of Service Attack, Data theft, Appropriation of secret information, Demolition of e-governance base, Destroying government database and Network disruption & damage. In the present paper, the researcher has discussed these different forms in which terrorists commit cyber-terrorism. The researcher has employed doctrinal research methodology to conduct research in the present study. The world has witnessed several devastating cyber-attack incidents, where the terrorists had attacked the cyberspace to achieve their political and social agendas. Some of the major cyber-attacks around the world like APT36, ReverseRat 2.0, WannaCry outbreak, etc have been shed light on by the researcher to show the extent of threat that can be caused by cyber-terrorism to threaten government, its officials and public at large. Sound and effective legal framework is extremely crucial to combat cyber-terrorism. In the present study, International and Indian legal provisions against cyber-terrorism have been explored by the researcher. The legal framework to punish cyber-terrorism will be useful only when the perpetrators are caught, which is one of the biggest challenges. The researcher has provided some suggestions to prevent cyber-terrorism along with concluding remarks.

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