Western governments are facing a potent and ill-understood new threat from terrorists and hostile powers in the shape of cyber warfare, military and security experts have warned.

Network attacks, a British government report says, are "growing in seriousness and frequency". And in a timely reminder of the emphasis that states and corporations alike are placing on the problem, Google and the National Security Agency were yesterday said to be finalising the details of a co-operative deal aimed ...

“Carry out all my demands or the entire country’s electricity will be cut off.” Is this another line from a suspense film, or is it a palpable threat made possible with a computer keyboard? “Today, there is a growing trend amongst hackers around the world to threaten national infrastructures for ransom,” says Dr. Yaniv Levyatan, an expert in information war at the University of Haifa.

If someone still thinks that this is science fiction, Dr. Levyatan notes how just recently, in Nov...

Cyberterrorism is a new terrorist tactic that makes use of information systems or digital technology, especially the Internet, as either an instrument or a target. As the Internet becomes more a way of life with us,it is becoming easier for its users to become targets of the cyberterrorists. The number of areas in which cyberterrorists could strike is frightening, to say the least.

The difference between the conventional approaches of terrorism and new methods is primarily that it is possib...