Chancellor unveils £2bn plan to target hackers
Hackers targeting air traffic control and power grids are among the government’s biggest concerns
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Britain will “strike back” against cyberattacks by foreign governments and criminal hackers, the chancellor is to pledge today.
The country must take an aggressive approach to protect the economy, infrastructure and individuals’ privacy from hostile forces, Philip Hammond will say. The risk of hackers targeting air traffic control and power grid networks is one of the biggest concerns.
Announcing a £1.9 billion programme to improve cyberdefences, Mr Hammond will make the government’s most explicit threat to deploy newly developed offensive capabilities against attackers, whether they be lone teenagers or foreign states.
His comments come after a series of attacks on the West for which Russia has been blamed. Last month Joe Biden, the US vice-president, threatened a revenge cyberattack on President Putin, who was accused of seeking to use hacking to influence the presidential election. There have also been espionage fears over plans to use Chinese technology at a nuclear plant in Essex.
Mr Hammond will warn that Britain is increasingly vulnerable to cyberattacks because of the proliferation of “smart” household items. Last week The Times reported that wi-fi-enabled devices including cameras, coffee makers and baby monitors — part of the so-called internet of things — can be accessed, leaving owners at risk of surveillance, burglary and blackout.
Ageing commercial IT systems, a shortage of computer security experts and the rise of “user-friendly” hacking tools are all adding to the threat, the chancellor will tell 4,000 experts at a Microsoft conference in London.
As part of a new national cybersecurity strategy, he will announce the creation of a national research institute to tackle the most pressing weaknesses.
The chancellor’s threat to turn Britain’s cyberwarfare capabilities against “hostile actors” is likely to be the most controversial element of his announcement. “Our new strategy . . . will allow us to take even greater steps to defend ourselves in cyberspace and to strike back when we are attacked,” he will say.
Last night Andrew Parker, the director-general of MI5, openly criticised Russia and said that its covert cyberactivities threatened UK security.
Mr Parker said that Islamic State continued to be the focus of the security services, which believe that there are about 3,000 violent Islamist extremists in the UK. However, in some of the most outspoken remarks by a security official in recent years, he warned that covert activities by Russia posed an increasing threat.
He told The Guardian: “It is using its whole range of state organs and powers to push its foreign policy abroad in increasingly aggressive ways — involving propaganda, espionage, subversion and cyberattacks. Russia is at work across Europe and in the UK today. It is MI5’s job to get in the way of that.”
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Mr Parker said that Russian cybertargets included military secrets, industrial projects, economic information and government and foreign policy.
He added: “Russia increasingly seems to define itself by opposition to the West and seems to act accordingly. You can see that on the ground with Russia’s activities in Ukraine and Syria. But there is high-volume activity out of sight with the cyberthreat. Russia has been a covert threat for decades. What’s different these days is that there are more and more methods available.”
Mr Hammond will be more circumspect in his comments, but will make clear that Britain would not allow a state-sponsored cyberattack to go unpunished.
George Osborne, his predecessor as chancellor, announced last year that Britain had developed a “dedicated ability to counterattack in cyberspace” and that a joint Ministry of Defence and GCHQ taskforce would improve the capability. Mr Hammond will commit to a “significant investment” in military-grade cyber-deterrence but will give no new details today.
A commitment to protect critical national infrastructure, especially in the energy and transport sectors, comes after Theresa May delayed approval for the Hinkley Point C nuclear power plant in Somerset, which is to be part-funded by a state-owned Chinese company.
It would be followed by a plant at Bradwell-on-Sea in Essex, using a Chinese-designed reactor. Approval was eventually given to Hinkley Point after extra security safeguards.
The government’s five-year cybersecurity strategy underlines growing fears about the threat posed by 5G technology, in which devices will become increasingly connected. Combined with ageing IT systems in businesses and easy-to-use hacking tools, “everyone from the living room to the boardroom is exposed to malicious hackers”, Mr Hammond will say.
Banks are believed to be greatly under-reporting the extent of cyberattacks because of fears of bad publicity. The number of reported attacks on financial institutions rose from five in 2014 to 75 last year.
SITTING TARGETS
Smart home gadgets More than half of adults own smart gadgets. These are the “connected devices” the chancellor mentions: fridges, coffee-makers and security systems that are connected to the internet so users can control them remotely. In tests, experts have hacked coffee makers to collect wi-fi passwords.
Banks, websites and major institutions Smart gadgets can also be hijacked collectively to bombard the servers hosting chosen websites with traffic. These “direct denial of service” attacks can be used to bring down individual websites or large parts of the internet, as in the attack last month that brought down sites including Twitter, eBay and Reddit in parts of the US, UK and Europe.
Hackers can also breach the security of organisations to steal or manipulate data. The sensitive personal data of more than half a million blood donors was accessed by an unauthorised person in Australia. Experts say one of the biggest threats to data comes from insiders, as in the Edward Snowden leaks in the US.
Infrastructure A nightmare scenario is cybercriminals or hackers employed by enemy states bringing millions of British homes off the grid. Experts at GCHQ were called in to boost security of the smart home energy meters, but some experts say they are still vulnerable to tampering. Hackers have also breached the digital systems of the rail network in “exploratory” infiltrations.
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