United We Stand...Hacked We Fall...

December 2009

Goverments must unite to head off cyber-terrorism threat, says Kaspersky. Governments have begun working to combat cyber threats, but many are working on national initiatives to tackle a global problem, says Russian security firm Kaspersky Lab. “To fix this problem, governments need to think internationally,” said the chief executive and co-founder of Kaspersky Lab. In an increasingly digital world, where all systems, including those for critical national infrastructures, are connected to the internet, every person, business and economy is at risk of cyber attack, he said. Although cybercrime is a big and growing problem, cyber terrorism is an even greater concern, said the chief executive. “We have not seen any real instances of cyber terrorism yet, but it is technically possible and just about everyone depends on the internet,” he said. The Conficker worm has shown that criminals are able to build botnets of millions of hijacked computers. “This means it is possible to build a botnet that has the power to halt the internet, but this threat is still not fully understood,” said the chief executive. “The capability exits to do very serious damage. Not only for money, but to scare people, which is the definition of terrorism,” he told Computer Weekly.