THE National Cyber Security Agency (NACSA) said preliminary findings are that the systems disruption at Kuala Lumpur International Airport was not due to a cyberattack.
In today’s world, the reality is that all individuals and organisations connected to the Internet are vulnerable to cyberattacks.
Cyberattacks are regarded as the most significant and frightening frontier, giving rise to serious criminal threats to global politics, economy, financial health and a nation’s security.
The cyberthreat actors are state-sponsored, organised criminal groups, hacktivists or terrorist groups.
Each of them pursues different motivations related to national secrets, politics, causing terror or making financial gain.
Cyberwarfare involves politically-motivated attacks by one nation on another nation, which involve the above groups to disrupt activities of an organisation or nation-state. This is done especially for strategic or military purposes and cyber-espionage.
In a book, The Perfect Weapon: War, Sabotage and Fear in the Cyber Age, David Sanger said threats from cyberattacks are more serious than those from terrorist or nuclear proliferation, including the covert United States cyber-campaign to sabotage Iran’s nuclear programme.
For example, Stuxnet, a malicious computer worm considered as the first digital cyberweapon believed to be jointly built by the US and Israel, was used to sabotage Iran’s nuclear programme. The virus destroyed roughly a fifth of Iran’s nuclear centrifuges, causing them to spin out of control.
James Farwell, who served as a consultant to the US Department of Defence, claimed that Stuxnet infected over 60,000 computers, more than half of them in Iran.
Other countries affected include India, Indonesia, China, South Korea, Malaysia, US, the United Kingdom, Australia, Finland and Germany.
Seven Iranian computer hackers in the US retaliated by carrying out cyberattacks on several American banks, the New York Stock Exchange, and a dam in New York.
Cyber actors have also been involved in cyber-espionage and military operations, where they break into computer systems and networks to extract sensitive government information.
“The Anatomy of Cyber-Jihad” report by James Scott stated there are a series of forums and communications channels where ISIS and extremists discuss how to build bombs, evade spies and hack the US Central Command’s Twitter account.
But the US claimed Pentagon’s network or internal system was breached.
CyberSecurity Malaysia has been planning to make Malaysia resilient against cyberattacks. To achieve this, Malaysia organised the national-level Critical National Information Infrastructure (CNII) cyber-crisis exercises known as “X-Maya”.
Through X-Maya drills, the level of cyber preparedness in CNII sectors will be raised as more organisations implement proper internal mechanisms and procedures to cope with cybersecurity incidents.
It is important that we protect our cyberspace. This is timely and a very good move by the government. The government must act and plan fast.
Cyber actors in the future may develop cyberbombs and viruses that have potential to destroy any nation with disastrous consequences and even loss of life.
The National Cyber Crisis Management Plan was set up to respond to cyberattacks at national level. Similarly, Singapore launched its National Cybercrime Action Plan in 2016 to ensure a safe and secure online environment. Other countries such as the United Kingdom, the Philippines and New Zealand also rolled out initiatives to combat cybercrime.
With regard to a national crisis situation, all the agencies in our ecosystem, namely NACSA, CyberSecurity Malaysia, Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission should work together in a coordinated manner. This is because no agency can work alone in ensuring the security of our cyberspace.
The writer holds a professional chair in crime and criminology,
Institute of Crime and Criminology, HELP University. He is former Transparency International Malaysia president