Remember those old James Bond movies with all the gadgets designed to thwart the operatives of whatever evil organisation the British super spy was up against; hang-gliding on to roofs, crawling down walls, unlocking safes and escaping with the vital secrets in the state-of-the-art Aston Martin usually just ahead of a blaze of gunfire from frustrated defenders?
Those were the days.
Modern spies never leave the office. They don’t have to. The enemy secrets are online and there for the taking providing you have world-class computer skills linked to a devious and ruthless mind.
The digital age means that companies, agencies and governments conduct their affairs online. Of course the things they don’t want made public are hidden behind firewalls, encryptions and multi-faceted passwords, but unlike the physical barriers that can effectively bar secure buildings, there is always a way through in cyberspace.
There is no shortage of stories about hackers, often teenage ‘nerds’ with time on their hands, breaking into the most secure websites of multinational companies or government departments. Often these attacks are simply criminal, seeking to profit from the ‘liberated’ information.
How much more effective are these activities likely to be if they are supported and sustained by national governments?
Cyber spying is on the increase and, says an American National Intelligence Assessment, China is the county most aggressively seeking to penetrate computer systems.
This supports a US Congressional report last year that named China as “the most threatening actor in cyberspace”.
As expected, Beijing rejects these accusations, but a recent investigation by the New York Times suggests that a shadowy unit of the People’s Liberation Army, variously known as the Comment Crew or the Shanghai Group, is committed to hacking into some of the most secure websites of the US Government and major corporations.
The fear is that this is not just a campaign to steal commercial secrets (although that is certainly going on) but may be the start of all-out cyber warfare where hackers shut down power grids of major cities or disable military equipment such as rocket launchers.
Even if this proved to be impossible, cyber attackers could disrupt targets by flooding its websites with junk emails until its system collapsed.
While many countries, including the US, are certainly involved in these activities, American military sources are certain that China is a clear leader in the field, and they expect attacks to increase in sophistication and intensity.
As the Chairman of the Congressional Intelligence Committee, Mike Rogers, points out: “Right now there is no incentive for the Chinese to stop doing this. If we don’t create a high price, it’s only going to keep accelerating.”
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