We are trying different doors and different drinks… that's the view of a paranoid man, but I do believe we will survive.Eugene Kaspersky in Tokyo with his company's Japanese mascot.

'It's a totally new world and we are trying to work out how to behave in the right way. Karspersky was characteristically jolly, but painted a neurotic Alice in Wonderland scenario. Hypponen pointed out that it is essential to identify what kind of attack it is governments should be encouraged to cooperate to defeat criminals, but will also be engaging in cyber espionage against each other. We are at the beginning of a new and dangerous era of cyberwarfare, both concluded. Attacks are also very difficult to attribute to anyone they could be written in a Chinese version of Word to make it appear the attack originated in China, or could be routed via Canada. Resistance, if not futile, is extremely hard. Where a rogue phisher or malware attack might be the criminal equivalent of a street mugger, state-sponsored attacks come with all the resources and technological sophistication of James Bond.

The biggest threat, both agreed, is state involvement. That level of resource and sophistication makes life very difficult for those charged with defending networks from attack, said Hypponen. Hypponen flashed up some mugshots of hackers, mostly convicted criminals and one Estonian who ran a rogue ISP that produced enough money to employ experienced hackers, fund its own servers, test and quality control on its malware. Hackers now are either criminals out to make money, activists out to protest or governments engaged in targeting their own citizens or attacking other governments, whether for espionage or cyberwarfare.

Those days are behind us – now the hackers have motives.' 'In the late 1990s the enemy was simple – happy hackers writing for fun. If viruses can damage hardware, as in 19 when 10,000 notebooks were destroyed with one virus, are we ready to reinstate human-operated mechanical control systems as roadblocks? It won't happen, but things are only going to get worse, he warns.Ĭo-speaker Mikko Hypponen, chief research officer at F-Secure, dismisses the 'happy teen hacker' image of the last decade. He points to Stuxnet, which was confirmed as the culprit behind three incidents of cyber-terrorism: one in Estonia, one on an Iranian nuclear facility and one on oil companies in Saudi Arabia, which destroyed data on 30,000 computers.

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