While evidence of terrorist copying hacker tactics is worrying, it is most certainly not a new trend. There are numerous examples of suspected terrorists engaging in cyber-surveillance and the exploitation of vulnerabilities. For example, law enforcement officials noticed a pattern of suspicious cyber-surveillance against the digital systems of San Francisco Bay utilities companies in the fall of 2001. The Internet traffic in question was traced back to the Middle East where the trail went cold.

In addition, during the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, the US military found laptops presumably left behind by al-Qaeda terrorists that contained information on how to program Supervisory Control and Acquisition Data (SCADA) devices. Although difficult, is not impossible to hack into a SCADA system that is connected to the Internet. In the spring of 2000, a hacker broke into the Maroochy Shire wastewater system, gained control of SCADA, and leaked hundreds of thousands of pounds of sewage onto the grounds of a Hyatt Regency hotel in Queensland, Australia . Should a terrorist achieve this level of control over a piece of critical infrastructure, it would be possible to wreak havoc ? above and beyond an inconvenience to the olfactory system.