UK CERT fighting 300 attacks per year
A new report suggests that serious attacks on the government’s computers by countries such as Russia and China may be happening more than once a day. Computer Emergency Response Teams at GCHQ are being asked to deal with more that 300 cyber attacks by foreign hackers every year. Many of these hackers are suspected of being funded by foreign governments.
The House of Lords Home Affairs Committee has been told that in the past 12 months GovCertUK has had to deal with more than 300 real or suspected attacks on their computer systems. The committee was also told that these attacks could just be a fraction of the attacks on public sector systems and did not include those by criminal gangs or aimed at the private sector.
MI5 have announced that they fear such attacks on the U.K. could eventually mean problems with the internet or the national grid and that virus’ could be sent to shut the services down causing chaos. Head of MI5, Jonathan Evans says that he believes that the cyber attacks were coming from countries like Russia and were an attempt to access sensitive government data as well as information on both civil and military projects.
