Internet Forensics and Combating Terrorism

Abstract:

Information technologies are an unavoidable and integral part of the lifestyle of a modern man who is using them fully aware of their usefulness, but frequently without enough information on the threats that directly endanger his own pri-vacy in its narrower but also in its broader sense. In this respect, emphasis should be given to information on the threats accompanying information tech-nologies, with particular attention being paid to the possibilities of the Internet abuse. The Internet as the communications platform of modern man is under-stood to contain the threat of identity theft, but our particular concern today is the abuse of the internet by terrorist, and primarily jihadist, elements.
The evidence indicates that violent jihadists use the Internet primarily to spread their terrorist ideologies and to encourage terrorist acts, and also as a platform for the recruitment and training of terrorists globally. During the preparation and terrorist attack stages, the Internet has additionally been used as communications infrastructure.
A particular, if at this stage potential, problem with the Internet is the pros-pect of Cyber terrorism. The (non-terrorist) cyber-attacks against Estonia, Georgia, and Kyrgyzstan illustrated the strength and power of such disruptive measures.
The issues which arise in the field of fighting terrorist Internet abuse are mainly of a legislative and then of an information technology nature, so it is necessary to make legislative and informatics preconditions for efficient com-bating terrorists by all those in charge of protecting us from the terrorists but also including ourselves.
Creation of a new information infrastructure and reinforcement of the ex-isting one in which the Internet Forensics, as a growing discipline, will have a significant part, is not a small contribution to this struggle.