International Cyber Terrorism

disregard for national borders will challenge legal systems and complicate a nation's
ability to deter threats and respond to contingencies.
In February 2010, the United States Joint Forces Command released a study which
included a summary of the threats posed by the internet:
With very little investment, and cloaked in a veil of anonymity, our adversaries will
inevitably attempt to harm our national interests. Cyberspace will become a main front in
both irregular and traditional conflicts. Enemies in cyberspace will include both states and
non-states and will range from the unsophisticated amateur to highly trained professional
hackers. Through cyberspace, enemies will target industry, academia, government, as
well as the military in the air, land, maritime, and space domains. In much the same way
that airpower transformed the battlefield of World War II, cyberspace has fractured the
physical barriers that shield a nation from attacks on its commerce and communication.
Indeed, adversaries have already taken advantage of computer networks and the power
of information technology not only to plan and execute savage acts of terrorism, but also
to influence directly the perceptions and will of the U.S. Government and the American
population.
On 6 October 2011, it was announced that Creech AFB's drone and
Predator fleet's command and control data stream had been key-logged, resisting all
attempts to reverse the exploit, for the past two weeks. The Air Force issued a
statement that the virus had "posed no threat to our operational mission".
On 21 November 2011, it was widely reported in the U.S. media that a hacker had
destroyed a water pump at the Curran-Gardner Township Public Water District in
Illinois. However, it later turned out that this information was not only false, but had been
inappropriately leaked from the Illinois Statewide Terrorism and Intelligence Center.
According to the Foreign Policy magazine, NSA's Tailored Access Operations (TAO)
unit "has successfully penetrated Chinese computer and telecommunications systems
for almost 15 years, generating some of the best and most reliable intelligence
information about what is going on inside the People's Republic of China."
On 24 November 2014. The Sony Pictures Entertainment hack was a release of
confidential data belonging to Sony Pictures Entertainment (SPE).
In June 2015, the United States Office of Personnel Management (OPM) announced
that it had been the target of a data breach targeting the records of as many as four
million people. Later, FBI Director James Comey put the number at 18
million. The Washington Post has reported that the attack originated in China, citing
unnamed government officials.
In 2016, Jeh Johnson the United States Secretary of Homeland Security and James
Clapper the U.S. Director of National Intelligence issued a joint statement accusing
Russia of interfering with the 2016 United States presidential election. The New York
Times reported the Obama administration has formally accused Russia of stealing and
disclosing Democratic National Committee emails. Under U.S. law (50 U.S.C.Title 50 –
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