Cyber attacks 'as critical for modern warfare as missiles'

Cyber attacks are as critical to modern warfare as drones and missiles, the head of the UK’s cyber agency will claim.

Richard Horne will outline how foreign states are waging cyber warfare against Britain at the Government’s annual cyber security conference in Glasgow on Wednesday.

The chief executive of the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) will warn that online security is the new “ front” and that “cyber operations are now integral to conflict”.

The NCSC, an arm of GCHQ , will reveal it is handling an average of four nationally significant incidents a week.

While those numbers remain “fairly steady”, Mr Horne will say they have noticed a change in where attacks originate, with the majority now coming from hostile states including China, Iran and Russia.

Mr Horne is expected to explain the threat Iran poses to the UK and how the regime is using the online domain to “support the repression of British individuals on our streets”.

It comes days after a firebomb attack on the offices of an anti-regime Iranian TV station in London, as well as a string of other arson incidents in the capital, which a suspected Iranian-linked group has taken responsibility for. They include the targeting of the Israeli embassy in Kensington and a number of Jewish sites in north London.

Police have not yet confirmed whether the incidents are linked. However, Matt Jukes, the Metropolitan Police’s deputy commissioner, said officers were looking “incredibly closely” at those claims. Mr Jukes also warned that Iranian militia or proxies are suspected of recruiting British-based “thugs for hire” to carry out rudimentary attacks for money.

The FBI recently warned that Iran is using malware to target dissidents around the world who are critical of its regime, allowing Tehran to steal data for “hack-and-leak” operations that can damage their reputations.

But when it comes to hybrid warfare, Mr Horne will say it is Russia which has learned the most in terms of applying the cyber lessons learnt in the “theatre of war”. Those “tactics and techniques” honed in Ukraine are now being directed towards critical assets in Britain and Europe.

He is expected to warn that the British public must learn to view the online domain as part of the contested space “between peace and war”.

As a result, Mr Horne will urge businesses to protect themselves without having to resort to paying ransoms, because the UK could be targeted “at scale” if it became involved in an international conflict.

Earlier this month, hackers linked to Russia’s GRU military intelligence agency were blamed for exploiting a weakness in commonly used internet routers to steal sensitive information from users. The NCSC said the APT28 group , also known as Fancy Bear, redirected internet traffic to harvest email passwords and other data.

Mr Horne will also describe how China’s cyber operations have an “eye-watering level of sophistication”, and how Britain must embrace AI as quickly as its enemies use it to attack.

That message will be echoed by Dan Jarvis, the security minister, who will call on leading AI companies to work with the Government to build cyber defence capabilities.

Addressing the conference on Wednesday, Mr Jarvis will say that building AI cyber strength is a “generational endeavour” that will “test the absolute limits of our engineering and innovation”.

Such co-operation could “protect our nation’s most critical networks by autonomously identifying and addressing vulnerabilities at a speed and scale no human can match”, he is expected to say.

Following that theme, Mr Horne will say: “We are living through the most seismic geopolitical shift in modern history. We are operating in a space between peace and war. Let’s be clear, cyber space is part of that contest.”