The age of cyber warfare is a threat to us all

In his recent State of the Nation address, Vladimir Putin said that if challenged by another state, Russia’s response would be swift, harsh and ‘asymmetrical’. An unusual word, but anyone who has been paying attention to the developments in cyber warfare will know what he means. Despite Russia pulling back more than 100,000 soldiers positioned on the Ukrainian border, British troops will shortly join Ukrainian counterparts to prepare for any misadventures from the Kremlin. And if a conflict were to escalate, the action may not be limited to faraway battlefields. It might involve cyberattacks, which would hit us at home. This, too, is a threat the Ministry of Defence seeks to prevent.

For years, the MoD has treated cyber warfare as a dangerous possibility, but in the next conflict — wherever it might be — British officials expect cyberattacks to be the new reality. ‘The threats of today are different from those we are used to,’ said the government’s Defence Command paper, which was published last month. ‘Our adversaries no longer only seek to challenge us in open, large-scale warfare, but instead seek to use activities below the threshold of open war… new technologies have created more potential ways for our enemies to do us harm.’

The risks are particularly acute for Britain: we are the second-most targeted country in the world for hacks after America. In the past four months, more than 100 British schools have been attacked by unidentified hackers using ransomware, which works by encrypting all the files on computers and then demanding a ransom to be paid in untraceable cryptocurrency. Schools in London, South Gloucestershire, Cambridgeshire, Coventry and Peterborough were infiltrated by gangs who demanded payment to return the use of their computer networks.

The Woodland Trust was also targeted in December by ransomware hackers. The attack meant that the charity was un-able to accept new memberships and many people complained of being unable to contact the organisation during January and February.