COMMENT : Britain faces the threat of cyber espionage and cyber terrorism — Musa Khan Jalalzai
From: Pakistan Daily Times
A new industry of information theft developed across the globe now sends its trained members to developed nations to steal their sensitive financial and industrial data
In newspapers, journals, social and electronic media, the quizzical statements of the British government about the vulnerability and insecurity of the country’s population and national critical infrastructure developed the concept that the country is no more a secure place for business and investment communities. Every month, newspapers publish lurid statements of law-enforcement commanders about the prevailing extremist and terror culture across the country in which they consecutively demand more funds to effectively counter it, but in reality, the way terrorism and extremism is countered in the country is not clear.
This drumbeating about the intensifying terror threat has now become an old mantra but one thing is clear that the threat to national security is very much there. The country faces the threat of terrorism and extremism due to its military engagement in South Asia and the Middle East. As we experienced on November 20, 2012, law-enforcement agencies carried out a large pre-planned intelligence-led operation against terror suspects and arrested 12 people from various districts. The police later on said that those people had links with some extremist groups of Pakistan and Bangladesh. The British law-enforcement and intelligence also face an invisible threat of cyber terrorism. Cyber warriors and hackers from across the border attack computers of various government institutions.
Security Service (MI5) recently warned that cyber crime, espionage and cyber terrorism pose a major threat to the national security of the country. The issue has been the focus of international media since a decade while the British government seems to have failed in intercepting the invasion of Russian and Chinese cyber warriors. We have been told in the past that intelligence agencies play an important part in helping to tackle the threat of economic warfare, but numerous complaints from various state institutions, including defence and foreign ministries, indicate that the campaign against information warfare has been less effective in the past. All strategies and plans of government and its institutions have failed to respond to the cyber espionage and attacks of China, Russia, India and North Korea.
A new industry of information theft developed across the globe now sends its trained members to developed nations to steal their sensitive financial and industrial data. They are not tanks and truck bombs; they are missiles who target the institutional assets of various states from safe distances. As western societies have now become completely dependent on information technologies, attacks on their computers have increased; cyber terrorists steal personal data and trade secrets and crackers break into their computer systems. These acts of terrorism caused severe economic loss and damage in the United Kingdom. The activities of these cyber terror networks are greatly enhanced by the use of the Internet that undermines distances and geographical boundaries.
Recent reports in newspapers have quoted President Obama as saying that the cyber threat is one of the most serious economic and national security challenges. In July 2012, the director of the US National Security Agency (NSA) labelled cyber espionage the cause of the greatest transfer of wealth in history, citing data on cyber attacks against US companies that have siphoned off vast quantities of intellectual property and industrial information. Britain is an easy target of cyber terrorism as various institutions recently reported the vulnerability of their computer data.
The lack of an international agreement among states on cyber terrorism is thwarting efforts to bring hackers to justice, according to the UNODC report. The report’s focus is cyber warfare; cyber groups and young hackers use the internet for terrorist purposes. They distribute propaganda to incite violence. “Governments need to work together to stop cyber attacks and operating systems must be redesigned,” Eugen Kaspersky, the founder of Kaspersky Lab warned. Kaspersky, whose lab discovered the flame virus that has attacked computers in Iran, told reporters in Tel Aviv University: “It’s not cyber war, its cyber terrorism and I’m afraid its just the beginning of the game…I’m afraid it will be the end of the world as we know it.
In my previous article, I warned that there are cyber networks operating in the country with the ability to acquire invisible quantities of sensitive data of various state institutions. These networks might be linked to some states. China, Russia, India and North Korea are cyber superpowers and possess technological know how to manage successful attacks from a safe distance.
These countries have trained thousands of cyber warriors for cyber attacks on the institutional networks of other states and establish strong economic espionage networks. The US and UK have failed to meet these challenges. In the UK, the GCHQ changed its strategy by establishing an academic research institute in partnership with research councils’ global uncertainties programme (RCUK) and the department of business innovation and skills. This newly established institute to counter the cyber aggression of China and Russia in Britain is still in the process of improvement. Whitehall is in frustration what to do and how to respond to the growing fear of cyber terrorism. Intelligence agencies demand a £ 2. 1 billion budget for 2014-15. Last year government announced a £ 650 million strategy to protect the country from cyber terrorism, because the GCHQ reported that cyber attacks targeting sensitive data in government institutions reached disturbing level.
Chancellor George Osborne recently suggested that MI5 and MI6 need to concentrate on cyber terrorism and devote more money and manpower to defending Britain from the cyber attacks of hostile powers. However, the case is different here as the intelligence and security committee months ago warned that much of the task to secure the country’s networks in cyberspace is still at an early stage. The Foreign Secretary recently warned that organised attacks on a daily basis against government networks are more irksome. On September 6, 2012, he launched a government guide to cyber security for business. The UK has developed weapons to counter the threat from hackers, William Hague said.
The writer is the author of Policing in Multicultural Britain and can be reached at zai.musakhan222@gmail.com
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