WE’LL WAGE CYBER WAR ON PUTIN
Our threat if Russia fails to halt attacks
RUSSIAN president Vladimir Putin has been warned he faces a cyber war if hackers try to cripple Britain’s hospitals, defences or power supply.
Ministers made it clear they will not tolerate Kremlin-sponsored attacks.
In a return to Cold War
tactics, Russia could be hit in retaliation by devastating counter strikes from an alliance of western nations.
Russian hackers are known to be plotting large scale attacks on Britain’s national infrastructure via the internet.
Armed Forces Minister Mark Lancaster said the most serious cyber-attacks would be classed as an act of war.
Such an attack would justify a counter-offensive, the minister added.
The warning came as suspicion grew that the Russians are using the so-called dark web to recruit hackers to work for them.
One security expert said: “It is entirely possible that the Kremlin is using the deepest, darkest parts of the internet to hire hackers to carry out operations to cripple organisations.
“They aim for anonymity and deniability. Working via the dark web is certainly one way to achieve that.”
This week General Sir Chris Deverell, the head of the UK Joint Forces Command, gave a chilling description of the methods of
‘We must be primed and ready to tackle these threats’
Putin-backed hackers. He said: “What they seek to do is to steal, plant, manipulate, distort, destroy our information.
“It is part of their doctrine. Every single system we have in our lives is in some way controlled by computer systems.
“If you can get them then you can affect us.
“That would stretch to power, it would stretch to traffic systems, to air traffic control systems.
“They don’t care about innocent people going about their lives. They are quite honestly capable of anything.”
Last month Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson said: “Russia is ripping up the rule book by undermining democracy, wrecking livelihoods by targeting critical infrastructure and weaponising information. We must be primed and ready to tackle these threats.”
His words echoed Prime Minister Theresa May’s warning last November when she directly addressed President Putin in a speech at London’s Mansion House. Mrs May said: “We know what you are doing. And you will not succeed.”
James Lyne of SANS Institute, a leading cyber security firm, said countries such as Russia are suspected of using the dark web to disguise their activities.
He said: “We have seen campaigns where the behaviour and the things they are after are clearly nation states.
“But the codes [digital DNA] being used are clearly those gained from the dark web or services from there. We haven’t been able to link up those behind the material but it is clear they are probably taking advantage of plausible deniability and contracting some criminals to do something you might want to do instead of getting caught yourself. It is undeniable that certain countries are players in this field – Russia, China, North Korea.”
A devastating attack on the
Ukraine’s banks, government and power grid last June masqueraded as a ransonware attack by a criminal gang.
But British intelligence is now certain Russian spies were almost certainly responsible.
Experts fear the Russians may have used the dark web to move around weapons and even nerve agents similar to the substance used in the attack on Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in Salisbury. Yesterday police were searching his house for traces of the substance used in the attack.
Radioactive material such as polonium-210 and the high-toxic poison ricin are also available.
Former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko died after drinking tea laced with polonium-210 at a hotel in London’s Mayfair in 2006. Former KGB officers Andrei Lugovoi and Dimitri Kovtun were identified as the killers. The two men denied involvement.
After a public inquiry retired judge Sir Robert Owen concluded in 2016 that ex-KGB boss Putin “probably approved” the operation to kill Mr Litvinenko.
In an infamous Cold War assassination a tiny amount of ricin was used to murder Bulgarian dissident Georgi Markov in 1978.
Mr Markov was walking over London’s Waterloo Bridge when an assassin armed with a poison-tipped umbrella stabbed him in the leg.
Ciaran Martin, chief executive of the National Cyber Security Centre, said: “The UK is one of the most digitally advanced economies in the world. If people lose confidence in the digital economy because they’ve had one too many letters telling them their data has been stolen, another sum of money has gone missing from a bank account or from a utility payment, or their employer is struggling because of a cyber attack, people will lose confidence in that digital economy on which our economic future is so dependent.”