The Quiet War Declared Open--The Invisible Threat of Electronic Jihad, May 2012

The Quiet War Declared Open--The Invisible Threat of Electronic Jihad, May 2012

In May 2012, a video released in the U.S. Senate shocked the world. In it, an al-Qaeda operative calls for attacking the U.S. not with guns and bombs anymore, but with keyboards. He advocated "electronic jihad. It was a new form of warfare that would use the Internet as a battleground to bring the enemy to its knees through cyber attacks. The targets were the nerves of the state, including government, finance, and the power grid, and their vulnerabilities were pointed out to be as serious as those of airline security in the past.

The threat goes beyond mere ideological incitement. We were entering an era in which even terrorist organizations without expertise could purchase zero-day vulnerabilities, botnets, malware, and access information from criminals via the dark web. A senior official of the U.S. Cyber Command testified that it could become a real force for good. The nation is no longer defending a physical territory, but an intangible realm of codes and currents. Quietly but surely, the electronic jihad has changed the face of warfare in the 21st century.