Identify which type of information attack described in the Week One readings poses the greatest threat to the United States and its citizens. Explain why you believe this information attack is the greatest threat.
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Information Attacks The type of information attack described in the Week One readings that poses the greatest threat to the United States and its citizens would be Cyberterrorism as an adjunct attack and Cyber plagues ( viruses and worms ) ” if a cyber – attack occurs simultaneously with either a conventional attack or a weapon of mass destruction attack … it can compound and enhance the impact of the original attack . ” ( Taylor , 2011 , p. 29 ) . Such attacks can inflict military deception , physical destruction and disrupt security measures . Consider the fact that nuclear launch codes requires computer programming to launch , these are just basic examples that could strike out terrorism with the wrong intensions . If we look back a few years ago when Target servers was breached for information , and Med Star hospital was hacked , speculations were composed of terrorists searching for a specific individual to copy over their information in order to gain access somewhere else that involves national security . Instead of hackers / terrorists going directly to the source / person they need information from , the Intel can be collected elsewhere from credit card companies in the form of a data breach . Historical incidents that can be referenced in cyberspace are ‘ The Morris Worm ‘ in 1988 that had a global impact on cyber infrastructure . The side effects to this incident caused computers to slow down , according to NATO ‘s database ” The Morris worm – one of the first recognized worms to affect the world ‘s nascent cyber infrastructure – spread around computers largely in the US . The worm used weaknesses in the UNIX system Noun 1 and replicated itself regularly ” ( NATO , 2016 , p. 2 ) . The creator of this was Robert Tapan Morris and he was the first person to become convicted under the U.S computer fraud and abuse act , however because of his knowledge he currently serves as a professor at MIT . While we can base cyberattacks / information attacks on several theories such as personality disorder , pedophiles and psychological theory , majority of these tech breaches are related to terrorism . Computer viruses is a code that attaches itself to other instructions within a computer and a worm run of weaknesses in popular computers and can duplicate themselves to cause major malfunction . I believe the information attack is the greatest threat because it ultimately accesses all personal information that can lead to the premeditation of a greater attack or possible recruit people for al – Qaeda . Regardless of what kind of attack takes place , on average in America almost every household has a computer and a smartphone that stores some sort of information . Web recruitment for terrorism is perhaps the number one way to negatively influence people to join terrorists groups , therefore I believe that information attacks in the form of cyberterrorism , worms and viruses can be the lethal way to destroy the United States and its citizens .