I had a feeling that some people stayed up all night on Sunday waiting for the planned, and announced, al Qaeda cyber-jihad to begin.

Thankfully, like the Great Pumpkin, it might just be a figment of the imagination.

We found some interesting points this week from Marcus Sachs, SANS Internet Storm Center director and a former White House cybersecurity advisor on whether or not cyber-terror is a reality. His point: Sunday’s threat was overblown in the press, but al Qaeda and other terrorist groups do use the internet to communicate and raise money.

“This whole cyber-terrorism thing has always bothered me, especially since every time some nut decides that the ‘next attack’ is going to be against an online target, the press goes into hyper alert mode. Folks, let’s get serious about this for a few minutes. I know that this is politically incorrect, but the odds of a terrorist group ‘terrorizing’ the internet with cyber-bullets and e-bombs are about as small as the odds of the Morse Code coming back as a primary means of communication. It’s not zero, but it’s also not much more than zero…

The terrorists use the internet for the same thing everybody else does - communicating with each other. They also use it to raise money through criminal activity, then launder it via one of the many electronic payment systems. Ever look at the spam and phishing junk mail you receive? It’s not just the Russian Business Network operating in the shadows. With the internet providing near-perfect communications and a seemingly endless supply of money why would a terrorist group want to blow it up?”