Cybercrime could lead to WWIII

CYBERCRIME will cost $10.5trillion dollars by 2025. On average, around 30 000 websites are attacked every day globally. Forty-four every second of every day. It is in the realm of warfare that cyber attacks can lead to WW III.

The former head of the Mossad, Mr Tamir Pardo, was quoted at a leadership conference in Seoul saying that cyber threats are a silent nuclear weapon.

Nuclear deterrence and cyber warfare have quite different strategic properties. Unlike a conventional or nuclear attack, in a wellplanned sophisticated cyber attack, determining the intruder has proven difficult, as is often the case in a cyber assault where the perpetrators are able to operate behind false IP addresses, foreign servers and aliases.

The anonymity that the cyber realm can offer is one of the many advantages of a fully fledged cyber infiltration. The exponential growth of internet interconnections has led to a massive growth of first class cyber attacks, often with disastrous and grievous consequences.

Our global society and military infrastructure have become largely dependent on computer networks, and information technology solutions.

Cyber attackers are unconstrained by geography and distance. They are difficult to identify and prosecute due to the anonymous nature of the internet. The use of cyber operations as an invisible assault weapon in armed conflicts poses a serious and deadly risk of harm to civilians.

Cyber attacks and their massive consequences are on the agenda of every government around the world. Cyber attacks against electrical grids and health care institutions underscore the vulnerability of services that maintain our hi-tech computer driven society.

Cyber technology has been pivotal in warfare, from hypersonic missiles to laser driven attacks.

In our hyper-connected world, unrestrained cyber attacks that threaten civil society are terrifying. Our world cannot exist without the internet, a pivotal platform for cyber warfare.

In cyber operations, the only weapons that need to be used are bits and bytes.

Currently there are 440 operable nuclear reactors in the world. A chilling possibility exists that they could be cyber attacked resulting in a premature shutdown that could result in a deadly meltdown.

The dangerous breakdowns at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl are vivid reminders of what could become a nuclear holocaust, if a nuclear complex is brought down by a sophisticated cyber intrusion.

Artificial Intelligence procedures can manipulate networks and devices in unthinkable ways. With the development of digital instrumentation and complex control devices, cyber security at nuclear installations has become a pressing issue.

Today’s security threats have expanded in scope and seriousness. FAROUK ARAIE