Flaming the Next Global War

Nigeria moved from 66th in 2011 to 59th in the Symantec global internet security threat report volume 17, indicating that the country is becoming more prone to cyber attacks.

Also, last week Dr. Hamadoun Toure, Secretary General of the UN International Telecommunications Union (ITU), urged nations to seek “peaceful resolution” in cyberspace to prevent a possible threat of global cyber war.

The ITU is the United Nations organ charged with the responsibility to co-ordinate sharing of communication infrastructure across the world. The union has since May been following a new global trend of cyber warfare engaged by unspecified nations against perceived enemy’s strategic economic targets.

Even as the ITU head was warning nations, the report came that over 150 million users of the social networking site, LinkedIn have had their passwords compromised.

Dr. Toure’s statement last week follows a new internet worm called ‘Flame’ said to be capable of taking out entire strategic national facilities in enemy territory. He noted that the Flame was too powerful to be created by an individual hacker.

“All indications are that Flame has been created by a nation state, that’s clear. The ITU is not mandated to make a judgement on who is responsible. Our role is to work with partners to promote better co-operation,” said Toure.

The ITU chief was emphatic stating that: “There is a risk of cyber war - but it’s not necessary. That’s what we’re trying to do - prevent. We’re saying the best way to win a war is to avoid it in the first place.

“As the UN, of course we are interested in making sure there is a peaceful resolution, and a peaceful approach to this.

“Our role is first to co-ordinate international efforts - not only sharing knowledge, but also training people, especially from developing countries because we want to avoid one country being a weak link in the whole process.”

Talking about countries “being a week link” in the emerging global cyber war, Nigeria does appear to be one and we don’t even know it.

Sheldon Hand, Symantec Territory Manager for West, East, Central Africa and Indian Ocean Islands (IWECA) region said nations become more prone to worm attacks as their economies grow healthy balance sheets.

Nigeria is among top three Africa economies and is projected to overtake South Africa as the continent’s leading economy in another three years. “As nations become more wealthier; as their economic prospects get brighter, hackers look into these countries to see what they could gain out of them,” said Hand.

Nigeria’s main economic stay is in the oil and gas sector with huge installations spread across the nation. These industrial installations could become vulnerable to cyber attack should anyone get angry with her rising global economic profile.

The origin of the Flame is not yet determine although a lot of speculations point to the United States’ targeting Iran’s nuclear installations like in previous attacks.

In 2010 a computer worm called Stuxnet was discovered. It was initially spread through MS Windows, and its target was installations of the German telecom giant, Siemens.

Stuxnet also infected programmable logic controller (PLC) and was thought to have originated from Israel, with Iran’s nuclear facilities as principal target.

Following on the heels of Stuxnet was Duqu, which was identified last September by experts at the Budapest University of Technology and Economics. Their analysis of Duqu indicates it shared similar characteristics with Stuxnet, with a slightly different operational mode.

“The main component used in Duqu is designed to capture information such as keystrokes and system information.”
Dr. Toure noted that the agency was making efforts to ensure that nations engage in peaceful cyber interactions and not war.

“We’re trying to see that there’s a global effort to keep cyberspace free of politics, ideology and especially free of criminals,” said Toure.

Hand also noted that small and medium businesses (SMBs) struggle to cope with cyber attack. “50 per cent of SMBs don’t have a disaster recovery plan. 81 per cent of SMBs consider their companies’ data as most valuable asset. 71 per cent of small businesses that suffer cyber-attack never recover. It’s fatal.”

The global spam attacks also show there are four main malware trends: malware attacks are 81 per cent on the rise, targeted attacks are on the increase, mobile threats provide more vulnerability to a larger population and data breaches are on the rise.

What should Nigeria do in the face of a growing global trend? To engage in cyber-warfare? Transform into a more knowledge base economy and get prepared for the war? The best defence to any attack is your ability to attack your opponent at its most critical point.

Nigeria should not seat back and claim we don’t have high volume industrial facilities that would combat enemy cyber-attack. A worm targeted at the nations’ petroleum installations which include petro-chemical facilities, refineries, fertilizer plants and liquefied natural gas fields would be disastrous.