Daily Times

In 2011, diplomatic ruction between the US and China over the establishment of North Korea’s cyber army (180,000 cyber warriors) became the central issue when the US State Department accused Pyongyang of developing a cyber force capable of destroying vital infrastructure and military data of other states. The US Secretary of State termed this development as the largest single security threat to the country’s interests. Some recent reports allege that China has developed a strong cyber army and e-espionage networks around the world to collect important financial and military data from private and state institutions. An FBI report has alleged the number of Chinese cyber intelligence and spy networks of being over 30,000 plus 150,000 spies.

In a recent London Conference on Cyberspace, experts agreed on the point that the threat to information security in the UK and Europe has intensified as skilled and trained hackers from several states managed to wage economic jihad against the state and private institutions. In his speech, British Foreign Secretary William Hague issued a stern warning to countries involved in financial terrorism against other states and said this undeclared war is unacceptable. Prime Minister David Cameron warned that this warfare is against Britain’s interests. “Please stop it,” Mr Cameron said.

Former British Minister for Counterterrorism, Baroness Neville Jones, said China and Russia were certainly involved in this sort of war. This undeclared war against the financial and military assets of the country resulted in significant economic losses. At present, a serious concern for the government is the cyber threat to national critical infrastructure and the theft of important data from important state institutions. The National Critical Infrastructure of the country faces a growing cyber threat due to the availability of malicious software tools. In 2010 and 2011, various private and government institutions experienced cyber attacks.

As the state and private institutions in the country have already been experiencing cyber attacks against their websites since a decade, new groups of financial jihadists started training their hackers to wage war against the global financial markets. These groups are skilled, educated, experts in cyber warfare, and have the capability to destroy and disrupt any financial network around the world. They utilise their computer skills to hack into the servers of state institutions and private companies, and use those servers, unbeknownst to the provider or proxy servers.

The newly migrated UK-based experts and groups have already carried out successful attacks against the state and private institutions, but their main strategies include attacks on banks and the National Critical Infrastructure. These e-jihadists, trained in well established cyber centres, exploit the internet through different technologies for retrieving information but justify the looting of important data as their fundamental right. A financial war between Europe and Asia has now become a hyper-strategic weapon.

This warfare is an integral part of the world economic order. It, however, already harmed the financial and investment climate of the UK and Europe. The attack of cyber terrorists on the money supply of the region has also made the banking sector face an uneven crisis. This is a complicated issue — much more complicated than it has ever been. The financial market and National Critical Infrastructure in Britain may face an unwinnable war against these forces in the near future because both the economic jihadists and the hackers utilise an arsenal of techniques in order to target Britain’s financial and military networks.

During the last two decades, cyber terrorists have attacked thousands of websites including the websites of the UK government, causing millions of pounds in damage. Now this war has reached a breaking point. To combat the forces of financial jihad, Britain’s Cyber Security Strategy was published in November 2011, which underlined the technicality of the threat faced by the country’s institutions from economic jihadists and state-sponsored cyber forces. The basic objectives of the UK Cyber Security Strategy are to introduce the traditions of partnership and transparency both across business and within the international community in an effort to meet the growing cyber threat.

In my previous articles on cyber terrorism, what I had predicted about the abrupt cyber attack on UK state institutions proved to be true. In my understanding, states like China, Russia, India, Iran and Pakistan have established well-trained cyber armies fighting a tenacious financial war against the US, UK and Europe. China has a significant cyber weapons and intelligence infrastructure in place. What is alarming is that they not only they have the intent, they have the money. These technologically armed advanced armies have created a new class of threat that has been termed ‘economic jihad’. These groups want to target the UK’s banking industry, military installations, power plants, air and land traffic communications networks and water pipes. Their basic aim is to retrieve data from various institutions and target the electrical power grid and rail networks across the country.

The emergence of well trained cyber groups are the biggest threat to corporate information security. These highly skilled groups are collaborating to discover new vulnerabilities in the financial markets and government-run institutions. As we have witnessed, the improvement of domestic security of the UK and Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) has encircled these forces from all sides but they still using different ways of penetration into financial data. The GCHQ is considered to be the guardian of Britain’s vulnerable financial assets and National Critical Infrastructure.

Cyber terrorism is the most serious threat facing the country. The London Olympics may come under attack from these forces, but the GCHQ and counterterrorism forces have successfully intercepted their attacks. Cyber terrorists can place many computerised ‘bombs’ around the city, they can disrupt the security system, international financial transactions. During the Olympic Games in London, experts believe cyber attacks cannot be denied as China suffered 12 million attacks a day during the 2008 games.

The writer is the author of Civil War and the Partition of Afghanistan and Punjabi Taliban. He can be reached at zai.musakhan222@gmail.com