A new crime is added to the extensive record of crimes, but this time the crime is of a different kind… electronic.
Therefore, it is necessary to confront it put in place appropriate laws, and take cyber security measures that aim to protect systems, networks, and programs from digital attacks. These electronic attacks usually aim to access, change, or destroy sensitive information, extort money from users, or interrupt normal business operations.
First: The digital environment
The digital environment is defined as a context or place enabled by technology and digital devices, which are often transmitted via the Internet, or other digital means, such as the mobile phone network. Records and evidence of an individual’s interaction with the digital environment constitute their digital footprint.
Second: Characteristics of cyberterrorism
Cyberterrorism has many characteristics that distinguish it from terrorism in its traditional form, which ultimately seeks to achieve illegitimate goals, namely:
1- Cyber terrorism is terrorism that crosses continents and borders and is not subject to a limited regional scope.
Difficulty in discovering the perpetrator’s trace in the perpetrator of cyber terrorism, as many difficulties stand in the way of reaching physical evidence linking the perpetrator to the incident.
2- Cyberterrorism is one of the most dangerous types of terrorism, as it negatively affects the national security of the targeted state. In this regard, Peter Grabowski says that the method of employing extensive information technology is a means of facilitating terrorism, including hacking intelligence information, extracting data, collecting funds, recruitment, mobilization, and remote training, such as training in the use of attack technology and its skills, sharing information, and publishing evidence, such as evidence of making weapons and others.
3- Cyberterrorism does not require violence and force when committed, but rather requires a computer connected to the information network and equipped with some necessary programs, so it is described as a soft crime that does not require the use of force in its violent or armed sense.
The perpetrator of the cybercrime has experience in using information technology, and therefore his goals are not difficult, and therefore it is difficult to prove that he committed the crime, due to the speed of the disappearance of digital evidence and the ease of its destruction and damage.
Dr. Mohammad Alabaddi
