Next attacks could be more sophisticated

Business and political movers and shakers warned of cyber terrorism.

DAVOS: Davos elite were warned on Saturday of the terrifying possibilities of modern cyber terrorism including attacks on power plants, telecommunications and financial systems and even turning all of Los Angeles’ traffic lights green.

“Possibilities of individuals being hacked would only increase in future as more devices like “smart televisions” are hooked up to the internet,” said Kaspersky Lab Security Group Head Eugene Kaspersky.

“What you call the Internet of Things, I call the Internet of Threats,” he said, adding that the worst of the worst scenarios would be an attack on a big infrastructure; a power plant.

“The criminals could bring about chaos in a much lower-level way,” said Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves.

In the wake of the cyber hack on Sony late last year, cyber security has been a hot button topic at the four-day World Economic Forum in the swanky Swiss ski resort.

Jean-Paul Laborde, head of the UN’s counter-terrorism unit, pointed to increasing links between organised crime and extremist groups such as Islamic State, which he said were now combining to launch cyber attacks on authorities.

Picking up on this theme, the Estonian president said that the line between government-sponsored attacks and criminal activity was becoming increasingly blurred.

With pressure mounting on Internet companies to block, for example, jihadist recruitment material on their networks, Bradford Smith, a top Microsoft executive, threw the ball back to public authorities.

Smith also warned of the dangers of putting in so-called “backdoors” to messaging systems, as urged recently by British Prime Minister David Cameron to keep track of potentially criminal activity.

“The path to Hell starts at the back door. You should not ask for back doors. That compromises protection for everyone for everything,” stressed the executive.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 25^th, 2015.

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