DCAWD.com

pair of UK researchers has one message when it comes to cyberwar: don't panic.
Cyber-attacks have caught the public's eye - and the Government's purse, with a £650 million investment - especially after hacktivist denial-of-service attacks connected to WikiLeaks put the issue in the headlines.
But the threat of cyberwar is "over hyped", according to Dr Ian Brown of the Oxford Internet Institute, and Professor Peter Sommer of the London School of Economics, who studied the situation for a report for the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).
We spoke to Dr Brown to find out how well prepared the UK is to withstand attack - and whether cyberwar is likely at all.

Q. What did you research uncover?
A. Between well-equipped states, like the US, China, UK and so on, certain cyber-weaponry would likely be part of any future war.
But having said that, we think that less capable states and sub-state actors, like terrorist groups and individual hackers, will not be able to have an equivalent damaging effect using cyber attacks.
Describing things like online fraud and hacktivism as cyberwar is very misleading
We think that describing things like online fraud and hacktivism as cyberwar is very misleading.

Most people are very unclear about how secure and how reliable those systems are. They probably have their own experiences of their PC crashing, losing work, getting infected with viruses and so on, so I can see why it’s a good media story.

Of course, it is in the interest of parts of Government and parts of the computer industry to highlight the threat, because it helps in increasing their own budgets.