Cyber-attacks and hacking: what you need to know
Philip Hammond has announced a £2bn investment into UK cybersecurity. But what exactly does that cover? Can you have cybercrime without hacking? And could your kitchen appliance turn against you?
The chancellor, Phillip Hammond, has announced a £1.9bn investment in Britain’s cybersecurity strategy. The money is to be used to protect the country from hacking attacks on all fronts, from opportunistic raids on individuals and businesses to focused cyberwar led by state-run teams.
Hammond has promised a big sum, but the world of hacking is easily large enough to occupy all that money and more. It’s double the amount set out for a similar strategy in 2011, but has to deal with a world where cybercrime has moved from science-fiction novels and Hollywood movies to our banks, phones and even kettles.
What are cyber-attacks?
The range of misdeeds which can be described as a cyber-attack is vast, and demands a similarly large range of responses.
At the most technically complex end, cyber-attacks can entail a close-knit team of elite hackers working under the remit of a nation state to create programs which take advantage of previously unknown flaws in software – called 0days, or zero-days, for the amount of time the manufacturer has had to fix them – in order to exfiltrate confidential data, damage key infrastructure, or develop a beachhead for further attacks.