14 DAY TRIAL // Recently, some rather disturbing news popped up - Al Qaeda could start web-based attacks against the countries it hates so much. The most disturbing fact isn't the one that terrorists could attack sites, send messages, or deny service etc. Those are very common nowadays and they happen without even being related to terrorists. Not even hacking VeriSign and taking down their servers, to take down the whole .com domain is the worst. The most concerning thing is that their attacks in the cyber-world could cause severe damage to people in the real world.
So, why this concern? For one thing, everybody knows that they have the reasons, that they want to do damage, and that they certainly have enough dough to do it. So, why haven't they done it until now? Well, just like any other military force, they plan things carefully - there is evidence that the Al Qaeda is planning a serious cyber-attack. As the Washington Post reports, the feds traced trails of a broader reconnaissance and they've also found multiple "casings of sites" nationwide. Routed through telecommunications switches in Saudi Arabia, Indonesia and Pakistan, the visitors studied emergency telephone systems, electrical generation and transmission, water storage and distribution, nuclear power plants and gas facilities, as seen in the Washington Post.
So, the previous facts show that they just might be attacking, but what will happen if they do? Well, for one thing - think about the fact that a lot of operations are based on computers. Dams, power facilities etc - all controlled via computers. Hacking one of those machines and taking control of it could cause a lot of damage - imagine opening a dam at the wrong time or making industrial fans spin so fast they melt down. The threat is serious, and terrorists have always been smart, surely, they've already seen the potential the Web has!