British officials concerned over 'cyberwar'

2010-03-08

Britain is becoming increasingly worried about the threat of 'cyberwar', according to a new article published today (March 8th) in the Times.

Although hostile computer activity takes a number of forms, intelligence experts are reportedly concerned that major infrastructures could be shut down by hackers.

Indeed, Jonathan Evans, director general of MI5, wrote a letter to 300 chief executives in 2007 to set out his concerns about China's alleged ability to steal top-secret data using complex programs.

The fears regarding China resulted in the establishment of the Office for Cyber Security and the secretive Cyber Security Operations Centre, which is located in Cheltenham.

Britain has suffered 300 cyber intrusions - constituting a sophisticated attempt to sabotage major computer systems - on government and military networks in the year to November 2009.

As a result, government officials are now attempting to establish how such IT security issues are viewed in legal terms, while also exploring the rules relating to retaliatory cybercrime.

"If I go and bomb someone's power station, that is an act of war," Baron West of Spithead, the permanent under secretary of state for security and counterterrorism, told the newspaper.

"But if I use a computer to make that power station effectively not work, is that an act of war? That is a simple stark example. There are much more complex examples.

"These were issues that hadn't been addressed before and we are now at the forefront of doing so."

The issue is complicated by the fact that it is often difficult to differentiate between cybercrime syndicates looking to steal information and the activities of hostile state intelligence agencies.

Authorities have also been warned about the threat of 'zero-day malware', which is a new raft of Trojan programs that are unidentifiable and can infiltrate a host computer, remaining dormant until they are activated.

They gather information for whoever is operating them and can transfer the control of a particular computer to an external user, while also being able to infect entire networks of machines.

"We grew up fearing the mushroom cloud, now we should fear a roomful of hackers with their electricity and internet bills paid for by a government," Raimund Genes, chief technical officer of Trend Micro, told the Times.

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