Cyber Terrorism
A man of Brazilian origin by the name Leni de Abreu Neto was on August 22, 2008 charged in New Orleans by a grand jury for his participation in a conspiracy to sell computers infected with malicious software. Leni, 35, who hails from Taubate, Brazil, was charged with conspiracy to damage computers globally. It is alleged that over 100,000 were actually damaged as a result of the deeds of Leni and his accomplices who include 19 year old Nasir Nordin from Sneek, Netherlands. The indictment stated that Leni and his coconspirators participated in using, leasing, maintaining and selling an illegal botnet. The indictment defined a botnet as a network of computers infected by malicious software.
A botnet, also referred to as a bot code is designed to allow unauthorized access by a third party, hereby referred to as a controller, who instructs the computer to execute commands such as launching denial of service attacks which are used to disable the targeted computer systems or send spam email which contain attachments that infect the machine with a virus (Jim, 2008, para 8). Once the virus is installed in a particular machine, it then searches the local network and the internet as well seeking other machines to infect, this expands the size and power of the botnet leaving behind a trail of destruction in loss or manipulation of sensitive data. The maximum sentencing that Leni faces is five years in prison and up to three years of supervised release. He also faces a fine of up to $250,000 for the loss that was suffered by the victims of this cyber terrorism (Will & Jimmy, 2008, para 4).
According to a survey conducted by the FBI on 428 university, corporate and government sites found that over 40% reported unauthorized access and hacking at least once a year.
REFERENCES
Jim, K. (2008). Brazilian Man charged in Cyber-Terrorism Case. Canada Free Press. Retrieved
from http://www.canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/4637
Will, B. & Jimmy, S. (2008). Statistics on Cyber-Terrorism. ESTU: Tennessee. Retrieved from
http://csciwww.etsu.edu/gotterbarn/stdntppr/stats.htm
