WASHINGTON — Japan's Aum Shinrikyo cult, responsible for a 1995 nerve gas attack on the Tokyo subway and other heinous crimes, has the potential to mount a cyberterrorist attack on the United States, according to a recently released CIA report.
It says Aum, which renamed itself Aleph in January 2000, "is the terrorist group that places the highest level of importance on developing cyber skills" and "identifies itself as a cyber cult and derives millions of dollars a year from computer retailing."
Members of the doomsday cult have been found guilty of crimes including the Tokyo subway gassing of March 20, 1995 in which 12 people died and thousands were injured.
The declassified CIA document was submitted to a special Senate committee in April to discuss threats to U.S. national security.
The report also addresses the al Qaeda terrorist network's sources of funding from a global network of individuals and charities and its ability to conduct cyberattacks on infrastructure that depend on electronic or computer systems.
The document shows how the U.S. was still in the dark in April regarding North Korea's secret nuclear weapons program as it cited other issues such as the country continues to harbor terrorists linked to a 1970 hijacking of a Japan Airlines plane that was forced to the North.
North Korea's suspected nuclear weapons program surfaced two weeks ago after Washington revealed that Pyongyang has admitted that it has maintained a secret program to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons development in violation of a 1994 bilateral nuclear accord between the North and the U.S.
The document, written in April, also stated that "the possibility that state collapse in North Korea could lead to reunification" of the Korean Peninsula could not be excluded.