Cyber cold wars fears grow

Forget run of the mill cybercrooks, international cyber spying will pose the single biggest information security threat in 2008.

That's according to security giant McAfee, which also predicts increased attacks against e-banking services and the growth of an increasingly sophisticated market for malware next year.

McAfee's annual Virtual Criminology report looked at global cyber security trends, with input from NATO, the FBI, and universities.

The report noted the growing use of the internet for cyber spying and attacks by government and allied groups. Targets include critical national infrastructure network systems such as electricity, air traffic control, financial markets, and government computer networks.

As many as 120 countries are using the internet for espionage. The most high profile cyber-attack this year was thrown against the national infrastructure of Estonia. Cyber assaults in general have become more sophisticated over recent months, featuring techniques designed to slip under the radar of government cyber defences.

Western governments have pointed the finger of blame for targeted Trojan attacks towards China, which has denied any involvement in the assaults.

According to NATO insiders, cited by McAfee, many governments are ill-prepared to fend off cyber-attacks. These insiders believe the attack on Estonia, which disrupted government, news, and bank servers for several weeks, is just the tip of the iceberg in cyber warfare.

"Traditional protective measures were not enough to protect against the attacks on Estonia's critical national infrastructure. Botnets, unsurprisingly, were used but the complexity and coordination seen was new. There were a series of attacks with careful timing using different techniques and specific targets. The attackers stopped deliberately rather than being shut down," a NATO informant told McAfee.

McAfee reckons attacks have progressed from "curiosity probes to well-funded and well organised operations for political, military, economic and technical espionage".

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/11/29/cyber_cold_war/