Big Chains Next For Cyberterrorism?

Some of the world’s leading hackers have starkly warned that British high streets stores could become the next victims of cyberterrorism, claiming that it’s “only a matter oftime” before they’re on the receiving end of the kind of tactics that shut down the Estonian government not too long ago.   Speaking in a panel at last week’s InfoSecurity Europe conference, the hackers – who are now white hat guys – seemed to regard the situation as inevitable.   Roberto Preatoni, thefounder of the cyber crime monitoring site, Zone-H, and WabSabiLabi, stated:   "We had all been waiting forthis kind of attack to happen. Estonia was just unfortunate to be the first country to experience it. But very soon, our own [western] companies and countries will be getting attacked for politicaland religious reasons. This kind of attack can happen at any time. And it will happen."   Although Russia was believed to be responsible for the Estonian attack, Preatoni said itwasn’t so.   "In my opinion, this was a collection of private individuals who spontaneously gathered under the same flag. Even though Estonia is one of the world’s most advancedcountries in IT technology, the whole economy was brought to its knees. That’s the beauty of asymmetric warfare. You don’t need a lot of money, or an army of people. You can do it from the comfort ofyour living room, with a beer in your hand.”   All the panellist were in agreement that British chain stores such as Tesco were prime targets, but byextension that idea could apply to big chains globally. Typically, the attacks are of the Denial of Service variety, which uses an extreme number of page requests to crash a site.   Preatonialso asserted that the latest net address system, known as Internet Protocol Version 6 (IPv6), is actually more amenable to DoS.