Collates findings from the Cyberterrorism Project’s Multidisciplinary Conference on Cyberterrorism in Birmingham, UK on April 11-12, 2013. The Report first describes the primary objectives and mission of The Cyberterrorism Project and then proceeds to summarize each paper presented at the conference – organized by Panel – and draw out emergent themes. Topics span three themes: (a) Defining Cyberterrorism, (b) Assessing the Cyberterrorism Threat, and (c) Responding to Cyberterrorism across seven Panels. The Report condenses the proceedings into “several recurrent themes.” These include: (i) cyberspace provides extensive potential opportunities for terrorist acts, (ii) there are a number of constraints on terrorist activity, such as financing or varying levels of technical knowledge, (iii) legal and political instruments are limited by “different strategic cultures and capabilities across countries; the language and construction of existing legal instruments…and sensitivities toward sharing information and data.” Additional themes suggest that, (iv) “distinguishing between different types of cyber-threat is challenging,” (v) the value of deterrence in the cyber domain is “unproven, at best,” and (vi) addressing threats exposes a variety of ethical, political, legal, and technical challenges, among others.
