By David Meyer, 28 April 2009 15:56
NEWS
Former home secretary David Blunkett has warned of an internet attack on the 2012 Olympics, in a speech to delegates at the Infosecurity Europe 2009 conference in London on Tuesday.
He said that those people defending disparate systems could be outsmarted by a co-ordinated attack on those systems, due to the distribution and number of different technologies that need to be defended.
The former home secretary added that a co-ordinated attack on ticketing systems, the transport system, hotel bookings and communications could result in "chaos".
"The ability to link these attacks together would lead to no transport, no accommodation, that tickets are not valid and that communications have broken down," said Blunkett. "We know there are countries capable of doing this."
Blunkett added that Trojans could be put in place on different systems and simultaneously "triggered from a distance" to cause the maximum amount of damage. He added that the US government had warned of the possibility of attacks against utilities companies, to force a shutdown of electrical supply.
Speaking to silicon.com sister site ZDNet UK after his presentation, Blunkett acknowledged that there was a danger of overstating the threat but said he was not making such an overstatement himself.
"There's always a danger of crying wolf, as there's a difficulty bringing about awareness [of threats]," said Blunkett. "But I'm not making these things up. People know these [cyber attacks] are taking place, they are just reluctant to admit it."
Blunkett noted that such an attack had only been shown successful in theory, when the US government demonstrated the possibility by overloading a generator in the 'Aurora' vulnerability demonstration.
"In a sense, unless [a successful attack] has happened then of course the threat could be [overstated]," Blunkett told ZDNet UK.
Comments
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1. karen challinor
I notice the use of the word 'could' in several places indicating potential threats but not actual threats
and then the absolutely beautiful phrases
"Former home secretary David Blunkett has warned of an internet attack on the 2012 Olympics"
and
"Blunkett acknowledged that there was a danger of overstating the threat but said he was not making such an overstatement himself"
both statements of absolute certainty and sincerity
so how does he know ? is he privy to some intelligence that MI6 has yet to learn if so why doesn't he tell them rather than Infosec Europe 2009 ?
but then there's the final comment
"In a sense, unless [a successful attack] has happened then of course the threat could be [overstated],"
wonderful he's covered all the bases
now I admit there is a strong possibility of an attack on the IT infrastructure at the 2012 olympics, and that such electronic warfare goes on all the time, but adequate safeguards should already be in place
basically he doesn't know of an impending attack and he isn't aware of security measure that are being used, he was asked to speak and so came up with a speech that said what everyone already knows, i.e. these attacks are happening and the olympics may or may not be a target
at best it was filler and at worst it was scaremongering but he didn't really say anything significant
2. Jeremy Wickins
This is typical Blunkett FUD, little better than the conspiracy-theory nutters, even down to the language. "It's happening, people know about it, but no-one will admit it"
Sorry, David - without better evidence, you are just another headline-seeker.
3. Richard Davies
China managed just fine and so did the other countries before it.
If there are certain attacks that they are specifically worried about, then they should be discussed with appropriate stakeholders and then plans put in place to mitigate that risk.
In theory most attacks are possible but they hardly ever occur. Its a fact that no matter what security you employ; your data is never 100% safe but thats just life I'm afraid.
I personally can't wait until someone wipes out ALL creditcard debts (hint hint, nudge nudge)!!!!