During the past year, some faculty members from the College of Engineering have been observing signs of information terrorism, otherwise known as cyber attacks.

With a $195,000 grant provided by the National Security Agency, Doug Jacobson and Jim Davis, associate professors of electrical and computer engineering, have been researching the causes and effects of cyber attacks.

This summer, with the help of four ISU engineering students and the National Security Agency, Jacobson and Davis have been trying to identify the cyber attacks and derive a method to stop them from occurring.

“The informational terrorists are not really a threat to ISU, but they can disrupt the system,” Davis said. “We want to help publicize it.”

Several years ago, Jacobson and Davis created ISU’s Informational System Security Laboratory (ISSL) along with Cliff Bergman, ISU’s cryptology expert.

Since then, Jacobson and Davis have made progress. They have been successful in being able to identify and recognize cyber attacks and understand how they work.

“The problem with cyber attacks,” Davis said, “is that you don’t know it has happened until the damage is done.”

These attacks have been known to make computers freeze, reboot or crash, and it is difficult to tell whether the computer encountered an attack or if the software caused the problem.

The attacks vary depending on the signals or messages they send to the computer. One attack, called the Ping of Death, sends packets of information that are too big or small for the computer to handle and therefore cause internal damage.

Another type of attack, called the Syn Flood Attack, establishes connections to a computer and jams the system. The Denial of Service attack has been known to disrupt the flow of information.

Both professors believe the terrorists are hackers working alone, but as part of a larger organization or underground network where the information is shared. Since the terrorists are not actually stealing information, their main goal is to just disrupt or shut down the system.

These informational terrorists are virtually impossible to track down because they are spread out all over the world, and their addresses contain false information.

“Unlike traditional terrorists, informational terrorists can launch an attack from the safety of their own country with just a computer on the Internet,” Davis said in a press release. “The odds of getting caught are very slim since the attacks generally destroy all evidence.”

“Any Internet Web site could be endangered,” Jacobson said.

Jacobson and Davis said they would like to develop software and hardware that would stop attacks before they start.