Cyber-Warfare: The New Global Battlefield
Throughout history, the world has seen wars fought on land, sea and air. But now, most experts agree that the new battleground in world conflict is cyberspace.
Iain Lobham, of the Government's listening centre GCHQ, has said attacks have reached "disturbing" levels - and that is just the ones we know about.
Here is a look back at some of the most high-profile acts of hacking and cyber-warfare in recent years.
:: Stuxnet - a 'worm' which surfaced in June 2010 - was so sophisticated it was said to have been able to damage the workings of uranium-enrichment centrifuges in Iran.
The attack's origins are still unknown, with many analysts and experts still intricately picking apart the worm's code in search of clues.
Theories range from it emerging out of Israel to being the work of the US government.
:: More recently another piece of malware, code-named DuQu, also has security experts troubled.
Borrowing much of its code from Stuxnet, the worm is extremely hard to detect as it lies almost dormant on an infected machine, passing on details of weaknesses of industrial processes.
Security firm Symantec said that unlike most viruses which seek to infect as many machines as possible, DuQu does not self-replicate - instead being designed to target specific systems.
China is considered a major player in global cyber warfare. In 2010, Google threatened to end its operations in the country after an unidentified attack on its Gmail service. The search company said its intellectual property was stolen.
It also discovered that the email accounts of Chinese human rights activists were targeted, raising suspicions that it was a government-led attack. Google said that at least 20 other companies were hit.
:: Many suspect China of being behind a large number of attacks on Western governments.
It is estimated that over 1.6bn attacks are launched from the country every month.
In April, Sky's Holly Williams was granted exclusive access to a group of hackers apparently sponsored by a security firm allegedly linked to the Chinese government.
:: In 2008, Russia was accused of engaging in cyber-espionage during its short conflict with neighbouring Georgia.
Government officials in Georgia said Russia had carried out a "denial of service" attack - a method of crashing websites by bombarding them with high levels of traffic - to block out official sites.
May 2011 saw Lockheed Martin - manufacturer of fighter jets and other multi-billion-dollar defence systems - admit it had come under a "significant" cyber-attack from an unknown source.
It said no crucial data had been taken, but their internal systems took a few days to fully recover.
Shortly after the breach, the UK government announced the formation of the National Cyber Security Programme, a special unit of the Ministry of Defence tasked with reducing the UK's vulnerability to cyber crime and attacks.
:: The so-called "hacktivism" movement, led by groups like Anonymous and the now-disbanded LulzSec, rode a wave of publicity and controversy throughout 2011.
After a spate of high-profile, embarrassing attacks on newspapers, entertainment groups and government departments, a number of arrests were made. British teenagers were among those detained.
The activitism of Anonymous have now moved into the "real" world with many of its members taking part in the widespread "Occupy" protest movement.
:: The International Monetary Fund suffered an attack in June from an unknown source likely, it said, to be a foreign government.
It was reported that the attack resulted in a loss of emails and other documents.
Source: http://news.sky.com/home/technology/article/16099978
