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.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
RSS