Facebook and other social media being used for 'cyber-jihad'

Advances in technology mean terrorists can share and store material online more easily

The government has warned that Facebook and other social media are being used by Al-Qaeda to plan attacks in pursuit of a 'cyber-jihad', the BBC have reported.

Last year the government identified cyber warfare as one of the most serious "Tier 1" threats to the UK's security and set aside £650m in additional money to make key infrastructure more resilient.

Defence Secretary Liam Fox recently revealed that his department had dealt with more than 1,000 "potentially serious" attempted cyber attacks in the past year.

The UK's updated counter-terrorism strategy suggests terrorists' use of social media to disseminate information and radicalise people is "commonplace", and warns that the number of attacks on IT systems will likely increase and that extremists were increasingly sophisticated in their use of social networking and video sharing sites.

Advances in technology - such as software to encrypt mobile phone calls and texts, file sharing networks and cloud computing - meant terrorists were able to store and share material online much more easily while also disguising their actions.

The document said: "There have been a number of attempts by terrorist and extremist groups to 'invade' Facebook."

"Twitter will be used to re-post media or forum articles enabling extremist content to be shared more quickly, widely and amongst people who would not normally search for extremist content."

Further information:
BBC