Tombul and Akdogan claim that there are three components that anxiety and fear of cyber-terrorism depend on: the psychological, the political, and the economic components (Tombul and Akdogan. 2016, 4). Tombul and Akdogan assert that the psychological component plays on the fact that cyberterrorism aims to create an uncertain fear among people especially with the help of misinformation, and claim that this is more dangerous than a terrorist bomb (Tombul and Akdogan 2016, 4). The authors, furthermore, claim that the political component is that cyberterrorism is used to provoke the opponents and obtain the information (Tombul and Akdogan 2016, 6). And lastly, they state that it also creates the economic turmoil (Tombul and Akdogan 2016, 6).

According to Tombul and Akdogan (2016), there are different advantageous factors that motivate attackers to use the internet as a tool to commit crimes:

• No need to invest a lot of money in an advanced computer as any moderate computer with an internet connection with allow the organization to achieve its crime (5).
• The independence of the location of connection to the internet. The attacker does not have to be present physically at the location of the attack/crime; he/she can be on his/her mobile, at home or in internet café (5).
• The virtual world allows the person to easily mask themselves and/or be anonymous to hide his/her identity through the use of different techniques such as using proxy services or anonymity networks to throw off the track and camouflage himself/herself as if attacking from a different place (5).

In this paper, Tombul and Akdogan (2016) claim that understanding whether an attack over the internet is cybercrime or cyberterrorism is hard to detect (6). They claim that cyberterrorism should include terrorist elements and activities such as killings, large damage, and politically motivated actions, therefore, terrorists using “computer to make propaganda, raise money, recruit new supporters cannot be defined totally as cyberterrorism” (Tombul and Akdogan 2016, 6).

Some terrorist organizations justify the use of violent on the internet as a means to reach their goals. According to Tombul and Akodgan (2016), these organizations use four different strategies for this justification (7):


• The first argument, according to Tumbul and Akodgan (2016), is that these organizations attempt to convince the public that they have no other choice; even though they are not against a peaceful solution, but the violence is “the last option against the enemies” (7). The authors give an example of the Tamil Tigers that insists that the group’s use of violence is legitimate as long as the Sri Lankan government rejects the rights of Tamil minority (Tombul and Akdogan 2016, 7).
• The second argument for the justification according to Tombul and Akdogan (2016) is the aim to demonize the enemy by acting as if the terrorist organization are saving the public at focus (7). The authors claim that the group could do this by showing photographs of ‘their’ people being killed by the target enemy (Tombul and Akdogan 2016, 7).
• The third justification of the use of violence is to depict weakness by arguing that “terror is the result of weakness” (Tombul and Akdogan 2016, 7). This claim by the authors is vague. They could have given an example to make it clearer.
• The fourth justification is to show the brutality of the ‘authorities acting against the target people (Tombul and Akdogan 2016, 7). This claim as well lacks in depth explanation by the authors.

According to the authors, cyberterrorism is even more dangerous than the conventional use of weapons as terrorists use it to disseminate the information to realize the act of terror and spread their beliefs and ideology through interactive social media - the authors call this “media-oriented terror” (Tombul and Akdogan 2016, 7).

Media has become an important tool for terrorist organizations to win psychological warfare (Tombul and Akdogan 2016, 7). They reach their defined group of people through the their preferred media through web 2.0 platforms offered for users to further actively participate, contribute to terrorist organizations’ content, and to facilitate communication through interactive social networks such as online forums, chatrooms, blogs and social media (Tombul and Akdogan 2016, 8).

Furthermore, Tombul and Akdogan (2016) discuss some terrorist groups’ use of the internet such as that of IRA (Irish Republican Army, Ireland), Shining Path (Peru), FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, Colombia), LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, Sri Lanka) (9) but do not mention that of the Islamic State. And further, refer to Conway (2006) to position the most preferred reasons for terrorists to use the internet as: 1- communication of information, 2- financing, 3- networking and 4- recruiting (Tombul and Akdogan 2016, 10).

In their conclusion, Tombul and Akdogan (2016) claim that the law enforcements should be careful in keeping a balance between democratic rights and values and security without neglecting the rights of citizens such as freedom of press and freedom of the expression (13). And most importantly, they urge law enforcements to stand “one step ahead on the use of technology” in order to succeed against the fight on cyberterrorism (Tombul and Akdogan 2016, 10).