CYBER-TERRORISM- LEGAL AND POLICY OPTIONS FOR COORDINATED NATIONAL PREPAREDNESS

Abstract

Improved youth literacy juxtaposed with high unemployment rate plus fundamental historical and religious distrust makes a perfect recipe for cyber-terrorism to thrive. Cyber-terrorism has become the newest and biggest potential expression of terrorism globally. While 9/11 opened a new vista in international terrorism, the Stuxnet cyber-attack on Iranian nuclear facility (2010), Wannacry virus attack (2017)  et al. demonstrates the latent capacity of the cyber-terrorist in achieving his devious purpose using technology.

This paper explains some fundamentals of cyber-terrorism, its potential damaging effect on critical infrastructure and its possible deployment as an instrument of mass disruption and destruction. It also canvasses policy options to be considered to reduce the effect of an attack. Scholarly articles and commissioned papers were reviewed on the subject. This paper however, uniquely discusses the subject from a Nigerian cyber security policy, strategy and law perspective.

Key words: Cyber-terrorism, cyber security, Stuxnet, Wannacry