Forum

Botnets, Cybercrime, and Cyberterrorism:
Vulnerabilities and Policy Issues for Congress
Summary
Cybercrime is becoming more organized and established as a transnational
business. High technology online skills are now available for rent to a variety of
customers, possibly including nation states, or individuals and groups that could
secretly represent terrorist groups. The increased use of automated attack tools by
cybercriminals has overwhelmed some current methodologies used for tracking
Internet cyberattacks, and vulnerabilities of the U.S. critical infrastructure, which are
acknowledged openly in publications, could possibly attract cyberattacks to extort
money, or damage the U.S. economy to affect national security.
In April and May 2007, NATO and the United States sent computer security
experts to Estonia to help that nation recover from cyberattacks directed against
government computer systems, and to analyze the methods used and determine the
source of the attacks.
1
Some security experts suspect that political protestors may
have rented the services of cybercriminals, possibly a large network of infected PCs,
called a “botnet,” to help disrupt the computer systems of the Estonian government.
DOD officials have also indicated that similar cyberattacks from individuals and
countries targeting economic, political, and military organizations may increase in
the future.
2
Cybercriminals have reportedly made alliances with drug traffickers in
Afghanistan, the Middle East, and elsewhere where profitable illegal activities are
used to support terrorist groups. In addition, designs for cybercrime botnets are
becoming more sophisticated, and future botnet architectures may be more resistant
to computer security countermeasures.
3
This report discusses options now open to nation states, extremists, or terrorist
groups for obtaining malicious technical services from cybercriminals to meet
political or military objectives, and describes the possible effects of a coordinated
cyberattack against the U.S. critical infrastructure. This report will be updated as
events warrant.