Use of information technology by terrorists is increasing the scope and reach of their acts. More and more terrorist activities are gestated and spread with the help of latest technologies.

The immediacy of the threat can be gauged from the fact that it was one of the top agenda in the recently held NATO summit. The US Department of Justice too has recognized cyber crime - which include politically motivated crime - as a major issue in its 2009 budget and a priority of the FBI. It has requested that the budget for cyber crime initiatives be increased by more than US $54,000,000. It is the highest quote for any FBI initiative ever. More and more countries including India are initiating cyber crime departments and laws to combat this growing threat.

While it's true that planes cannot be crashed into towers through the Internet, but it can be used to mastermind a similar plot. Vital information can be stolen and used to cripple the critical infrastructure of a country. Politically motivated hack attacks are on the rise with hackers tapping into defence computers of various countries to steal data.

Cyber space is used by terrorist organizations for propaganda, to garner support, generate funds and recruit potential members. Internet provides terrorists relative anonymity and means to conceal themselves. Internet terrorism is an extremely dynamic phenomenon and not easy to track; websites emerge out of the blue and keep changing their format. They might disappear just as suddenly or seem to disappear by simply changing their online address. There are thousands of websites aiding terrorists and their supporters. Terrorists can easily access and distribute manuals on topics like arms and explosives, fraudulent documents, etc. A proliferation of satellite maps and images on the Web can help plan and execute targeting and precision bombing.

Information in the cyber world is disseminated through encoding, encryption or steganography. The various forms of encoding include language coding - the use of foreign language or a simple substitution cipher, e.g., the term ``Food and Beverage Industry'' used by Al-Qaeda as a veiled reference to the FBI. Advancement in encryption technology is quickly outpacing the ability of law enforcement to break into it. New technologies are developed for safe and secure financial and other confidential transactions online. Terrorists make use of these very technologies to make sure their communication methods are secure as well.

Steganography is the technique to fully hide actual content within legitimate or legitimate-looking) data. Terrorists can easily hide vital and sensitive communications by mixing it with large amounts of public data. Seemingly normal files can have embedded secret message data that will appear usual to an innocent observer. An example is hiding messages within the noise of a digital image, in which some bits that make up the image are used to encode a secret message without altering the image significantly. The technology has now expanded to nearly all kinds of file including audio and video recordings. The expertise to search through thousands of files filtering through the Internet every second for such encoding is at present beyond the resources of any government.

The threat posed by cyber terrorism is beyond doubt a reality and the targets are rife and attractive. The question that needs to be addressed immediately is whether enough is being done to mitigate, counter and combat the threat.