State sponsored cyber attacks will be easier to verify, says Hague

FOREIGN SECRETARY William Hague has warned countries guilty of attacking the UK in search of secret information that as technology matures the attacks will become easier to trace back to those responsible.

Hague said at a press conference to close the London Conference on Cyberspace that there are four messages for governments to take away from the ground-breaking two-day event.

Dialogue on cyber crime between governments needs to "become a permanent activity", he said, and policy makers must better engage "the ideas and ingenuity" of those outside government.

"The third message for governments is that state sponsored attacks are not in the interests of any country long term, and that those governments that perpetrate them need to bring them under control," he added.

"The fourth message for governments is that, while working together to defeat threats in cyber space, you should not imagine for an instant that you can resist the growing force of the tide now flowing for transparency, open information and the free exchange of ideas. Those governments that try to do so are bound to fail."

In response to a question asking why the government does not deal with Chinese hackers as they would an intruder found attempting to break into a top security building, Hague pointed out that the source of cyber attacks can be difficult to verify.

At a "non-judgemental conference", he said it would be wrong to draw foreign governments into a debate on the future of cyber space and then point accusatory fingers, but that this "might happen on another occasion".

"People make a lot of assumptions which are sometimes correct and sometimes not correct," he said. "We will have vigorous private discussions as our ability to detect the source of these attacks improves."

China is often described as the source of hacking attacks - for example the Operation Aurora attacks on Google and others, Night Dragon, and most recently the Nitro attacks on chemical firms - but it is difficult to ascertain whether they are state sponsored or merely that the command and control server is rented in the country. µ