Southeast Asia will inevitably face an Internet-based attack by terrorists against key institutions, even though militant groups lack the technical savvy so far, security experts said yesterday.
Developing nations remain especially vulnerable to a cyber assault because they haven't built up defenses for their computer, banking and utility systems, said Yean Yoke Heng, deputy director general of the Kuala Lumpur-based Southeast Asian Regional Center for Counterterrorism.
"The threat is real," Yean told reporters at the start of a regional cyber security meeting. "Definitely, we are vulnerable .... It's not a question of how or what; it's a question of when. So we better get our act together and be prepared for this eventuality."
Regional authorities currently have no specific information about possible threats, which could include the hacking of public networks or the spread of a computer virus, but "it's always good to be one step ahead of this terrorist threat," Yean said.
The five-day conference, which brings together security officials and analysts from Malaysia, the US, Japan, Cambodia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand, will discuss how governments can prevent terrorists from exploiting information technology.
So far, Southeast Asian militant groups such as the al-Qaeda-linked Jemaah Islamiyah network have mainly used the Internet to channel propaganda, recruit members, raise funds and coordinate bomb attacks, said Rohan Gunaratna, a Singapore-based militant expert.
"It will take a very long time for Southeast Asian terrorist groups to develop the capability to attack the Internet," Gunaratna said. "For now, groups such as Jemaah Islamiyah are using the Internet as a medium to create a new generation of radicalized Muslims."
There are more than 1,000 jihadist Web sites in Southeast Asia, Gunaratna said. He said captured Jemaah Islamiyah suspected leader Riduan Isamudin, or Hambali, used the Internet to communicate with operatives involved in the 2002 Bali bombings that killed 202 people in Indonesia.
Despite no evidence of an imminent cyber attack, Southeast Asian authorities should still study how technologically advanced governments in the US, Europe and Australia are safeguarding digital assets from terrorist exploitation, Gunaratna said.
‘UNUSUAL EVENT’: The Australian defense minister said that the Chinese navy task group was entitled to be where it was, but Australia would be watching it closely The Australian and New Zealand militaries were monitoring three Chinese warships moving unusually far south along Australia’s east coast on an unknown mission, officials said yesterday. The Australian government a week ago said that the warships had traveled through Southeast Asia and the Coral Sea, and were approaching northeast Australia. Australian Minister for Defence Richard Marles yesterday said that the Chinese ships — the Hengyang naval frigate, the Zunyi cruiser and the Weishanhu replenishment vessel — were “off the east coast of Australia.” Defense officials did not respond to a request for comment on a Financial Times report that the task group from
Asian perspectives of the US have shifted from a country once perceived as a force of “moral legitimacy” to something akin to “a landlord seeking rent,” Singaporean Minister for Defence Ng Eng Hen (黃永宏) said on the sidelines of an international security meeting. Ng said in a round-table discussion at the Munich Security Conference in Germany that assumptions undertaken in the years after the end of World War II have fundamentally changed. One example is that from the time of former US president John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address more than 60 years ago, the image of the US was of a country
DEFENSE UPHEAVAL: Trump was also to remove the first woman to lead a military service, as well as the judge advocates general for the army, navy and air force US President Donald Trump on Friday fired the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force General C.Q. Brown, and pushed out five other admirals and generals in an unprecedented shake-up of US military leadership. Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social that he would nominate former lieutenant general Dan “Razin” Caine to succeed Brown, breaking with tradition by pulling someone out of retirement for the first time to become the top military officer. The president would also replace the head of the US Navy, a position held by Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to lead a military service,
BLIND COST CUTTING: A DOGE push to lay off 2,000 energy department workers resulted in hundreds of staff at a nuclear security agency being fired — then ‘unfired’ US President Donald Trump’s administration has halted the firings of hundreds of federal employees who were tasked with working on the nation’s nuclear weapons programs, in an about-face that has left workers confused and experts cautioning that the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE’s) blind cost cutting would put communities at risk. Three US officials who spoke to The Associated Press said up to 350 employees at the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) were abruptly laid off late on Thursday, with some losing access to e-mail before they’d learned they were fired, only to try to enter their offices on Friday morning
RSS