Cyber attacks and web defacements have increased
dramatically since the start of the war against Iraq, according to
security firm F-Secure.
More than 1,000 sites were hacked in the first
48 hours of the conflict, F-Secure said, with many of the attacks
containing anti-war slogans.
Security consultancy mi2g is now predicting
that the war against Iraq will make March the worst month for
digital attacks since records began in 1995.
It predicted that the resulting global lost
productivity and cost of recovery would be between $2.1bn (£1.3bn)
and $2.6bn (£1.7bn) for March alone.
So far this month UK, US, Australian and South
Korean websites had been worst affected by cyber attacks, mi2g
said. It detected 5,646 attacks against US online interests up
until 21 March. This is greater than the 4,365 attacks recorded
against all other victims across the globe for the same period.
“We have been observing the coupling between
physical war and cyber warfare since March 1999 when the
Nato-Serbia conflict began,” said DK Matai, Executive Chairman at
mi2g. “We are expecting retaliatory digital attacks that cause
economic disruption to escalate further.
"When civilian casualties mount as some
bombs go astray or a sensitive interest is accidentally targeted
such as the Chinese embassy incident in Belgrade, further cyber
mayhem can be expected in the shape of digital attacks or fast
spreading viruses and worms with political content.”
Some 71% of all digital attacks recorded in
during the month so far were against Linux systems, compared to
only 24% against Windows, mi2g said.