Bomb hackers while police still use XP?

We shouldn’t take Sir Michael Fallon’s comments about bombing hackers too literally (‘Question of the Fortnight’, Issue 506, page 11). As I’m sure he knows, locating hackers responsible for attacks would be almost impossible. It would certainly be difficult enough to do so without risking the death of innocent people.

What’s more important is the subtext of his comments, which is: don’t mess with us. In this, he has my support. Threatening enemies with retaliation has worked as a deterrent over the years, such as the mutually assured destruction policy that kept the peace during the Cold War. Why shouldn’t it also work in the age of cyber-terrorism? Russia, Iran and North Korea, take note.

But the UK seems to be sending mixed messages to the world regarding the importance it places on cybersecurity. On the one hand we threaten to bomb hackers and spend £1.9bn on cyber defences, while on the other 18,000 Met Police computers still run the dangerously unsafe Windows XP (News, Issue 506, page 9). Foreign hackers could get their retaliation in first by targeting these XP machines.

As we have seen, terrorists – whether cyber or ‘real’ – don’t care what or who they target. If the real-world terrorists have no qualms blowing up people enjoying a night out, then their cyber equivalents certainly won’t think twice about hacking the police. And just imagine if they coordinated their efforts, so that bombs and van attacks coincided with a hack that took down the system running the 999 service. We must expect the worst, and plan accordingly. Marjorie Smith