Research Note: More Bucks, Still No Bangs? Why A Cost-Benefit Analysis of Cyberterrorism Still Holds True

The paper is based on a previous research paper, published in 2004. In the latter, a cost-benefit analysis was applied to terrorists' motivations and incentives to use cyber-attacks as a 'new form' of terrorist activity, the outcome of the 'though-experiment' revealed that it was not productive for terrorist groups to 'invest' in cyberterrorism. More that 15 years have gone by and there is now ample evidence that cyber-attacks by terrorists have been very rare: terrorists organisations have used online tools for recruiting and self-financing but mostly as a tool for information operations (IO), i.e. to promote their ideas and forward their messages. It torched ut that the forecasting of that analysis, and other along those lines, has been proved correct. The current paper explains why of that outcome, how it should be improved and, more importantly, since cyberterrorism will resurface again in the future, why alla past analysis on terrorism in general should be subject of reviews, to assess which ones have been correct (and should be retained) and which not and should be discarded.