http://www.forbes.com/sites/seanlawson/2015/12/18/has-isis-become-the-top-cyber-threat/
Dec 18, 2015, Sean Lawson
The media coverage and public debate following the November terror attacks in Paris might give one the impression that ISIS has suddenly become the top cyber threat to Western countries. Officials in France, the U.K., and Canada have seized on the Paris attack to promote a number of cyber security initiatives. In the United States, we have seen a renewed debate over encryption, as well a calls from both leading Democratic and Republican presidential candidates to censor the Internet to combat the threat that ISIS poses there. This is despite the fact that the Paris attacks were not cyber attacks and were planned “in plain sight” and without widespread use of sophisticated encryption technologies by the attackers.
We should ask two questions: First, has our attention really shifted towards ISIS as a cyber threat? Second, if so, is this shift warranted? In short, my answer to these questions is yes, there is reason to believe our attention has shifted, and no, this shift is not warranted.
As I have argued in my previous work, close observers of the history of the U.S. cyber security debate have noted a tendency for cyber threat perceptions to mirror larger national security concerns. That is, the perception of cyber threat actors can be influenced by other perceived threats that are not primarily about cyber security. Paris seems to provide an example of this phenomenon.
To try to get a sense of whether public attention has indeed shifted towards ISIS as a cyber threat actor in the wake of the Paris attacks, I did what is, admittedly, a quick and dirty comparison of mentions between ISIS and China in news articles also mentioning some variation of the terms cyberwar, cyberterror, or cybersecurity. I used LexisNexis Academic Universe to search newspapers for articles meeting these criteria for one month leading up to the Paris attacks on November 13 and then for one month following the attacks. (Note that in the ISIS search, “Anonymous” was excluded from the search string to avoid articles that were primarily about Anonymous’ “cyber war on ISIS” instead of primarily about ISIS itself.)
Figure 1 – Percent of total cyber threat-related articles for China and ISIS, before and after the Paris attacks.
The results indicate that not only did ISIS see a 40% increase in the number of articles in which it was mentioned alongside cyber threat-related terms, China saw a 45.7% decrease. Similarly, ISIS made significant gains in terms of its percentage of the total number of articles mentioning a cyber threat-related term, moving from 5.33% of the total to 10.72%, while China decreased from 15.79% to 12.29% (Figure 1).
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There is also evidence to suggest that this increase in attention for ISIS was indeed primarily linked to the Paris event. While only 21.95% of China cyber-threat articles from November 13 to December 13 also mentioned Paris, 60% of the ISIS articles from the same time period also mentioned Paris (Figure 2).
Figure 2 – Percent of post-Paris cyber threat-related articles for China and ISIS that also mention Paris.
Again, these are the results of an admittedly quick and dirty analysis. Much more work would need to be done to really dig into the articles and see if these trends really hold up under closer examination. But I think these initial findings are interesting and raise a couple of interesting questions and concerns.
The first question is this: If our attention really has been shifted towards ISIS as a cyber threat actor in the wake of Paris, is this shift warranted? Only if we think that ISIS really has significantly improved its cyber attack capabilities from September to warrant putting them on par, in terms of attention, with China. I doubt that is really the case.
In September 2012, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper delivered his report to Congress on “Worldwide Cyber Threats.” Russia and China were clearly identified as the most formidable cyber threat actors facing the United States. Terrorists were mentioned last and their activities were primarily identified as those related to propaganda, recruitment, and fundraising. It is doubtful that ISIS, since September, has risen in the ranks of cyber threat actors to be on par with China.
This seeming shift in attention towards ISIS as a cyber threat actor should be concerning for two reasons. First, it risks inflating the cyber threats actually posed by ISIS. But, second, the data presented above also raise the possibility that such a shift could distract from or even decrease attention paid to more serious cyber threats. When we see prominent political leaders calling for censorship of the Internet, greater surveillance powers, or weakening communications security in response to the perceived ISIS cyber threat, the costs of focusing our attention on the wrong cyber threats could not be higher in terms of both our money and our freedoms.
(Thank you to my colleague, Ye Sun, in the Department of Communication at the University of Utah for assisting me with this analysis.)
Sean Lawson is Associate Professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Utah. He is author of Nonlinear Science and Warfare. Follow him on Twitter @seanlawson.
Dec 18, 2015, Sean Lawson
The media coverage and public debate following the November terror attacks in Paris might give one the impression that ISIS has suddenly become the top cyber threat to Western countries. Officials in France, the U.K., and Canada have seized on the Paris attack to promote a number of cyber security initiatives. In the United States, we have seen a renewed debate over encryption, as well a calls from both leading Democratic and Republican presidential candidates to censor the Internet to combat the threat that ISIS poses there. This is despite the fact that the Paris attacks were not cyber attacks and were planned “in plain sight” and without widespread use of sophisticated encryption technologies by the attackers.
We should ask two questions: First, has our attention really shifted towards ISIS as a cyber threat? Second, if so, is this shift warranted? In short, my answer to these questions is yes, there is reason to believe our attention has shifted, and no, this shift is not warranted.
As I have argued in my previous work, close observers of the history of the U.S. cyber security debate have noted a tendency for cyber threat perceptions to mirror larger national security concerns. That is, the perception of cyber threat actors can be influenced by other perceived threats that are not primarily about cyber security. Paris seems to provide an example of this phenomenon.
To try to get a sense of whether public attention has indeed shifted towards ISIS as a cyber threat actor in the wake of the Paris attacks, I did what is, admittedly, a quick and dirty comparison of mentions between ISIS and China in news articles also mentioning some variation of the terms cyberwar, cyberterror, or cybersecurity. I used LexisNexis Academic Universe to search newspapers for articles meeting these criteria for one month leading up to the Paris attacks on November 13 and then for one month following the attacks. (Note that in the ISIS search, “Anonymous” was excluded from the search string to avoid articles that were primarily about Anonymous’ “cyber war on ISIS” instead of primarily about ISIS itself.)
Figure 1 – Percent of total cyber threat-related articles for China and ISIS, before and after the Paris attacks.
The results indicate that not only did ISIS see a 40% increase in the number of articles in which it was mentioned alongside cyber threat-related terms, China saw a 45.7% decrease. Similarly, ISIS made significant gains in terms of its percentage of the total number of articles mentioning a cyber threat-related term, moving from 5.33% of the total to 10.72%, while China decreased from 15.79% to 12.29% (Figure 1).
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There is also evidence to suggest that this increase in attention for ISIS was indeed primarily linked to the Paris event. While only 21.95% of China cyber-threat articles from November 13 to December 13 also mentioned Paris, 60% of the ISIS articles from the same time period also mentioned Paris (Figure 2).
Figure 2 – Percent of post-Paris cyber threat-related articles for China and ISIS that also mention Paris.
Again, these are the results of an admittedly quick and dirty analysis. Much more work would need to be done to really dig into the articles and see if these trends really hold up under closer examination. But I think these initial findings are interesting and raise a couple of interesting questions and concerns.
The first question is this: If our attention really has been shifted towards ISIS as a cyber threat actor in the wake of Paris, is this shift warranted? Only if we think that ISIS really has significantly improved its cyber attack capabilities from September to warrant putting them on par, in terms of attention, with China. I doubt that is really the case.
In September 2012, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper delivered his report to Congress on “Worldwide Cyber Threats.” Russia and China were clearly identified as the most formidable cyber threat actors facing the United States. Terrorists were mentioned last and their activities were primarily identified as those related to propaganda, recruitment, and fundraising. It is doubtful that ISIS, since September, has risen in the ranks of cyber threat actors to be on par with China.
This seeming shift in attention towards ISIS as a cyber threat actor should be concerning for two reasons. First, it risks inflating the cyber threats actually posed by ISIS. But, second, the data presented above also raise the possibility that such a shift could distract from or even decrease attention paid to more serious cyber threats. When we see prominent political leaders calling for censorship of the Internet, greater surveillance powers, or weakening communications security in response to the perceived ISIS cyber threat, the costs of focusing our attention on the wrong cyber threats could not be higher in terms of both our money and our freedoms.
(Thank you to my colleague, Ye Sun, in the Department of Communication at the University of Utah for assisting me with this analysis.)
Sean Lawson is Associate Professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Utah. He is author of Nonlinear Science and Warfare. Follow him on Twitter @seanlawson.
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