Not many guerrilla groups have the kind of expertise needed to penetrate sophisticated military computer systems. But with companies, governments and the military becoming ever more reliant on computers and the Internet, these powerful networks present a tasty target. When hackers threaten National Security Guerrillas, wanting to damage a country' s communications infrastructure, would be more likely to try to blow them up with conventional explosives. This would inflict damage on a specific target and generate the kind of publicity these groups crave. But even if action against computer systems is unlikely when clocks strike midnight on Dec. 31, information warfare is becoming an indispensable arm of future military planning.
Experts also have fears about the civilian world.
Criminals may use the frenzy to fix computer systems from possible bug contamination to place their operatives at the heart of banking systems for fraudulent purposes. Surreptitious cyber attack Paul Beaver, spokesman for Jane's Defense Weekly, believes the possibility of surreptitious cyber attacks is a real one, but says this is limited to guerrillas or anti-social action. Peter Sommer, senior research fellow at the London School of Economics, reckons that military and financial computer systems are far too sophisticated to fall to amateur hackers. You need a great deal of inside knowledge. You can conceive of a madman knowing about critical telecommunications to bring them down.