UK government willing to retailate over cyber attacks
The Government’s security chief has issued a thinly veiled threat to state sponsors of cyber terrorism that the country could only stand by for so long before retaliating.
Lord West of Spithead, the parliamentary under-secretary for security and counter-terrorism, told The Observer yesterday that the UK had been the target for 300 significant attacks on core government networks over the past year, and said such attacks were only like to increase in scope and frequency. He added that many of these daily attacks were clearly the work of foreign states, but the nature of the attacks made it difficult to acquire concrete proof.
âThere is no doubt that some state actors have sucked out huge amounts of intellectual copyright, designs to whole aero engines, things that have taken years and years of development,â West said. âThe moment you mention a particular state, they will deny it. The problem with cyberspace is that attribution is extremely difficult. It’s almost impossible to do it in terms of evidence that would be necessary in a court of law.â