We never really thought about this idea but, we are not suprised at all after reading it. If people are willing to lose their life for a cause, why wouldn’t they be willing to go to prison for one? This makes hackers all the more dangerous, but preparations are being made. Have a look at this article:

Australia is preparing for cyber-terrorism attacks from “suicide hackers”, who will aim to bring down critical infrastructure for a “cause” and not worry about facing 30 years in jail for their actions.

On Tuesday, Colonel Paul Straughair, the director of network centric warfare at the Australian Army and part of the Australian Department of Defence, said he saw “no logical reason” why suicide hackers would not strike in the future.

“We see suicide bombers that are prepared to die for their cause. I don’t think it is too far before we start to see people who are quite prepared to conduct cyber-terrorism.

“While the risk will be high that they will be caught, they will accept that as a fact of life for ‘the cause’ and be prepared to go to prison for 30 years because they stopped a banking system working or a power grid taken down or took down the air traffic control system of a country for a period of time,” Straughair told ZDNet Australia.

You can read the rest of this article HERE.

Thinking about hackers that are willing to cause damage without thinking of the repercussions is nothing new. Script kiddies, or inexperienced hackers, hack websites and computers all the time without the knowledge of defensive detection mechanisms and tracing tools. But, hiring experienced hackers and persuading them to cause maximum damage without worring about the repercussions… now that’s a different story. This is something we will have to deal with in the future and even though the primary targets will probaby be government agencies and large corporations, home and small office users are equally as vulnerable. Just remember to keep your computer as secure as you can manage and hopefully hackers like this will just move on to easier targets.

Tags: Hackers