Following recent accusations of government-sanctioned digitial espionage and alleged hacking attacks from China and Russia, there seems to be evidence that countries are capable of using electronic means to disrupt the computer systems of rival nations.
However, while it appears that government-backed organisations may be using hacking tactics to disrupt the systems of enemy states, there is still disagreement among security experts as to whether cyberterrorism is a real threat.
An act of terrorism is often defined as an incident that leads to loss of life or at least harm to life — and security experts claim that thus far an attack against a computer system hasn't achieved this. This may be due to the simple fact that a homemade bomb is always going to be more effective than an electronic attack, according to some security watchers. But others claim it's only a matter of time before a terrorist group manages to bring down a power station or air-traffic control system.
Talkback
I recently read the transcript of the Estonian Defense Ministers talk at the Center for Strategic and International Studies website.
http://www.csis.org/component/option,com_csis_events/task,view/id,1440/
He explains the background and threats encountered when Estonia was hit by attacks earlier this year.
Although is wasn't a global scale problem, it appears that to smaller country the impact was very costly. The attacks focused on the government mainly but also targeted 2 major banks in the country and impacted 90% of online transactions. Additionally the problem was compounded by attacks on news services portals, effectively causing news blackouts.
The whole affair was co-ordinated and executed to strike when there was unrest in the country already.
In all this demonstration of power is a real warning that cyber-threats are real and anything we can think of is most-likely a threat waiting in the wings.
That will teach me to not check the links in an article before replying :)