A&M professor explores cyberterrorism, computer hacking for Ace of Clubs lecture
Aconnected world gives us knowledge, social accessibility and much more, but it also opens the door to something insidious: cyberterrorism.
That’s the topic under discussion for Dr. Walter Casey’s Saturday lecture at the Ace of Clubs House carriage house downtown starting at 6 p.m. Titled “Your Computer is Locked: The Personalization of Cyberterrorism,” his talk gives background and discusses the effects of cyberterrorism.
“We’re going to take a look at what is terrorism, the difference between terrorism and ordinary criminal activity, because there is some confusion,” said Casey, an associate professor of political science at Texas A&M UniversityTexarkana. He’ll give a short history of hacking and look at such activity since the advent of computing.
Casey will discuss how this activity is done and just how terribly pervasive it is. “And what you can do about it on an individual
level,” he said.
Much of it is explanation, because in some respects there’s not a lot we can do if we want to be part of a connected world. Many things we do on a day-today basis make us vulnerable to mischievous activity of some sort. Casey likens it to leaving your door open and house unlocked.
“It’s so convenient,” Casey says. We have our smart phones, with which we watch cat videos and order pizzas, he observes. All of this we can do with aplomb using a hand-held device.
“At the same time, it’s amazingly easy to break into it and you never know,” Casey cautions. The shear amount of attention we need to stay on top of it all is something many can’t muster. We don’t purchase strong anti-malware protection, etc.
“We go for what’s easy,” he said. And what’s cheap.
Even the definition of what constitutes cyberterrorism can be tricky. The data breach involving Equifax? Not terrorism, he said. Russian election meddling at the state level? That might be terrorism.
“It’s so hard to get this defined in a way that encompasses activities the way we want them to,” said Casey, who occasionally teaches a course on cyberterrorism.
He encourages people to pay attention to what their devices do, though, and to read that end user license agreement. The key fob that opens your car door? That can be hacked, he points out. It’s easy to write the code to hack into things.
Casey suspects making people aware of the ease with which this can be done might rattle a few cages. But that said, there are steps we can take to deal with the problem. And there are things that as a nation we can do to improve our security, he believes.
Casey’s interest in cyberterrorism is a natural extension of inves-
tigating terrorism from many angles. “My original research area was revolutions and other forms of civil violence,” said the professor, who used to write code and has an interest in how information can be democratized and brought to places where it wasn’t found before.
Casey’s lecture will last roughly an hour.
(Admission: Free for Texarkana Museums System members, $5 for non-members. Call 903793-4831 or email aceofclubs@ texarkanamuseums.org for a member discount code. Register in advance at Eventbrite.com. Seating is limited.)