Terrorists fight their wars in cyberspace as well as on the ground. However, while politicians and the media have hotly debated the dangers of terrorists sabotaging the Internet, surprisingly little is known about terrorists’ actual use of the Internet.

In this timely and eye-opening volume, Gabriel Weimann reveals that terrorist organizations and their supporters maintain hundreds of Web sites, taking advantage of the unregulated, anonymous, and easily accessible nature of the Internet to target an array of messages to a variety of audiences. Drawing on a seven-year study of the World Wide Web and a wide variety of literature, the author examines how modern terrorist organizations exploit the Internet to raise funds, recruit, and propagandize, as well as to plan and launch attacks and to publicize their chilling results. Weimann also investigates the effectiveness of counterterrorism measures, and warns that this cyberwar may cost us dearly in terms of civil rights.

Illustrated with numerous examples taken from terrorist Web sites, Terror on the Internet offers the definitive introduction to this newly emerging and highly dynamic arena. The volume lays bare the challenges we collectively face in confronting the growing and increasingly sophisticated terrorist presence on the Net.