In June 2010, a computer virus called "Stuxnet" was discovered lurking in the data banks of power plants, traffic control systems, and factories around the world. Stuxnet was an intricate, highly evolved computer code, a "worm", created to be used as a weapon of mass destruction. It could crash power grids, turn off the pressure inside nuclear reactors or shut down the flow of oil pipelines - and while performing these acts, it could inform the system operators that everything was running normally. .
Stuxnet had a target; the centrifuges that spin nuclear material at Iran's enrichment facilities. It was a common consensus among experts that the brains behind the virus belonged to a faction of men from Israel, since the virus was coded with references to the Hebrew Bible.
According to Dorothy Denning, American information security researcher and professor in the department of defense analysis at the prestigious Naval Postgraduate School, was the first person t to formally define cyberterrorism as a form of unlawful attacks against our infrastructure network. In today's world, almost everything runs in computers including data about the economy and military. What if cyber criminals used the computers as a weapon against us? If the U.S. does not protect itself, then a cyber-terrorist with the help of their "cyber-weapons" as Lewis refers to as the use of viruses, worms, or rootkits (a powerful, destructive viral software), will hinder a nation from eating, drinking, moving, and living. Consequently, the cost of billions of dollars will end up slowing the nation economy. Cyber terrorists infiltrate the civilian foreign infrastructures to cause damage to society.
Cyber criminals penetrate the energy plants, in order to disrupt the quality of life. The criminals break into the energy plant system to manipulate power grids in selected areas of U.S. Indeed, they launch early attacks so they can destroy the security and infiltrate the system.
