A "cyber cold war" is developing as international web espionage and cyber-attacks become the biggest threats to internet security, according to a report.
The computer security firm McAfee said governments and government-allied groups were engaging in increasingly sophisticated cyber spying, with many attacks originating from China.
Some 120 countries could be developing the capacity for such activities.
What started as probes to see what was possible have become well-funded and well-organised operations for political, military, economic and technical espionage, the report said, with perpetrators aiming to cause havoc by disrupting critical national infrastructure systems.
Targets include air traffic control, financial markets, government computer networks and utility providers. In September, the Guardian reported that Chinese hackers, including some believed to be from the state military, had been attacking the computer networks of British government departments, including the Foreign Office. China has spelled out in a white paper that "informationised armed forces" are part of its military strategy.
McAfee, whose report was compiled with input from Nato, the FBI, and the Serious Organised Crime Agency, said that according to Nato insiders, the wave of cyber attacks that hit Estonia earlier this year, disrupting government, news and bank servers for weeks, was the tip of the iceberg. In May, the Baltic state said that at least 1m computers had been used in the cyber warfare, which saw hundreds of thousands of hits bombarding Estonian websites to jam them and make them unusable. The method used was known as distributed denial of service.
The attack coincided with the climax of a dispute between Moscow and Tallinn over a Soviet second world war memorial in the Estonian capital, but officials there backed away from accusing the Kremlin directly. Russian officials have denied any state responsibility.
In the past 12 months there have been reports of cyber attacks against government targets in the US, Germany, India, New Zealand and Australia. China has denied any involvement.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2007/nov/29/hacking.news
