People intent on committing cyberterrorism are likely to attack critical elements of the world’s computer infrastructure in the future, but they do not yet have the capability to do so, a U.S. expert on cyberterrorism said last week. “Terrorist organizations would very much like to tomorrow sit down at the keyboard and be able to have a sustained impact against the critical infrastructure, but I don’t believe that they have the capability yet,” Matthew Devost, president and chief executive officer of the Virginia-based Terrorism Research Center, said at a lecture in Tokyo. “They might be able to attack systems on the Internet, but that is much different from attacking those other systems underlying the critical infrastructure.” Devost, who has been researching the impact of information technology on national security since 1993, provides strategic consulting services to foreign governments and corporations, advising on counterterrorism, information warfare, critical infrastructure protection and homeland security. In his March 25 lecture at the Tokyo American Center, Devost repeatedly warned that computer systems are “inherently vulnerable” and continually under the threat of an attack, noting that terrorist organizations could be secretly preparing for an attack even now. Devost categorized the types of threats from the smallest to the biggest, according to whom the threat came from: unstructured hackers, structured hackers, so-called hacktivists who are traditional activists protesting a particular policy or action by using hacking techniques, industrial spies, single-issue terrorists, international terrorists and nation-states that are “engaged in looking at potentially using cyber attacks as a mechanism of information warfare.” Full Story