web and mobile fraud
Attacking the cyber hackers
The UK is to spend almost £2 billion to weaponise its digital powers against cyber hackers, terrorist groups, criminal gangs and rogue states, the Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne announced this month.
Speaking at the home of digital surveillance GCHQ in Cheltenham in the wake of the Paris terrorist attacks, he said: “We reserve the right to respond to a cyber-attack in any way that we choose.”
The spectrum of capabilities could include infecting and disconnecting enemy computers or even disrupting power supplies to cause loss of life in the most extreme circumstances.
During the speech, the chancellor also announced the creation of a new National Cyber Centre as he says the Government is to double investment in online security to £1.9bn. There will also be new efforts to encourage 14- to 17-year-olds to develop their cyber skills and opportunities for startup companies to innovate in cyber technology at two new “hubs”.
Ministers will also lobby internet service providers to work with the Government to divert more malware attacks and to block “bad addresses”, the Treasury said. Osborne was the first chancellor ever to speak at GCHQ, the intelligence agency responsible for communications, as ministers respond to the Paris terror attacks that killed at least 129 people.
He warned that whoever hits the UK should know “we are able to hit back”. He said Isis’s “murderous brutality has a strong digital element” in which the group seeks to kill through attacks on cyber infrastructure.
Junaid Hussain, a British Isis fighter who was killed in a drone strike in Syria is believed to have been a key player in the so-called cyber caliphate waging war against the west online.
In Britain, Hussain had been part of the hacker group Team Poison, where he gained access to the address book of the former prime minister Tony Blair and published information from it, earning him six months in jail in 2012. That same year, Team Poison tied up the phone lines of an MI6 anti-terror hotline.
Since his death in August, his group appears to have remerged under the name Islamic State Hackers. Osborne said: “At a time when so many others are using the Internet to enhance freedom and give expression to liberal values and creativity, they are using it for evil.
The chancellor argued it was cheaper and easier to mount a cyber-attack than to defend against one. In a message to cyber criminals, he said: “We will defend ourselves. But we will also take the fight to you, too - to those who believe cyber-attacks can be done with impunity, I say that impunity no longer exists.”
He said the military would need to be involved because it must be able to fight the battles of the 21st century in cyberspace as well as on land, sea, in the air and in space.
There was no confirmation that intelligence agencies are attacking any terrorists or rogue states, but it has been revealed in the past that they have helped the Police disrupt criminal gangs.
