Governments Have No Idea How To Stop Cyberterrorists – Time To Call In John McClane, Says Eugene Kaspersky

The head of one of the world’s leading security firms has claimed that many world governments are not capable of stopping potentially catastrophic cyber-terrorist attacks.

Despite a number of high-profile cyber-attacks dominating the headlines in recent months, governments are running scared of the criminals behind them, claimed Eugene Kaspersky, founder of the eponymous security company.

The threat posed by such criminal organisations is becoming very real, he warned, as most countries simply do not have effective protection in place.

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“States are scared,” Kaspersky told The Times. “They’re absolutely not yet ready for this challenge. They understand the problem, and it’s huge. But they don’t yet have the strategy in place.

“We have seen attacks on very well-protected banks. (Hackers) have successfully infected them. They can infect every enterprise if they really want.”

When asked what the worse-case scenario for government was, Kaspersky said: “My advice is to watch Die Hard 4.0.”

Working together

Kaspersky gave particular warnings around so-called “modular” attacks, which see various experts hired to work on separate parts of a hack without knowing what the entire project entailed.

“Terrorists will employ specialists to design attacks,” Kaspersky said. “That’s the next step. I’m afraid that we are very close.”

Kaspersky’s warnings come in spite of his company recently establishing several initiatives aimed at working with governments and law agencies in the fight against cybercrime.

Last October, Interpol announced it was teaming up with both Kaspersky Lab and fellow security firm Trend Micro to tackle the growing cybercrime menace, with the company providing threat intelligence as well as hardware and software to the cyber-forensics laboratory at the newly-formed INTERPOL Global Complex for Innovation (IGCI) building in Singapore.

Kaspersky has also partnered with City of London police to assist them in tackling cybercrime, offering training to educate officers in identifying and resolving cases concerned with online fraud.
The week-long “hands-on” train course will include network traffic inspection, how to analyse hard-drive images, and how to decompile malicious software using specialised training tools and methodology developed by Kaspersky Lab.

And Kaspersky was happy to suggest that law enforcement authorities had made strides forward to be able to effectively counter cybercrime effectively in the next few years.

“While states are not ready for cyberwar, I think cybercrime will be under control,” he said.

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