The UK chancellor said the UK would “retaliate” against cyberattacks in a speech at GCHQ, in the latest of a series of UK security measures announced after the Paris attacks.
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George Osborne claimed ISIS is building the ability to launch damaging cyberattacks against UK infrastructure as he announced the latest of a series of new UK national security measures on Tuesday in the wake of Friday's attacks on Paris.
In a speech delivered at the UK's GCHQ spy agency, the chancellor of the exchequer sought to connect the Paris attacks with his new "National Cyber Plan".
"This was an assault not just on the people of France but on all of us who value freedom and democracy," he told the assembled audience of intelligence officials and contractors.
"We stand with the people of France. We know we must act as one, just as our enemies see us as one."
Osborne then repeated an announcement made by the prime minister on Monday that – in contrast to other government bodies, including the police – the UK's intelligence agencies would receive extra funding and an additional 1,900 staff to handle the threat of terrorism.
He then warned of the threat posed to the UK from cyberattackers – not just loss of data or internet service, he said, but potentially damage of infrastructure or even loss of life if hospitals or other critical infrastructure were attacked.
Osborne made no mention of China or Russia – traditionally seen by the UK's intelligence agencies as the primary cyberattackers against the US and UK – but did warn that ISIS "want" to be able to launch cyberattacks.
"Let's be clear: ISIL are already using the internet for hideous propaganda purposes, for radicalisation, for operational planning too," he said. "They have not so far been able to use it to kill people by attacking our infrastructure through cyberattack. They do not yet have that capability.
"But we know they want it, and we know they're doing their best to build it. So when we talk about tackling ISIL that means tackling their cyber threat, as well as the threat of their bombs, and their guns, and their knives."
Osborne said the UK would establish "deterrence" against those who assaulted its critical online infrastructure.
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Osborne said his national cyber plan would build "active defence", improve education of cyber issues, and simplify the "alphabet soup" of UK agencies tackling the problem.
Most significantly, he said the UK would build a deterrence strategy to scare off would-be attackers, including ISIS.
"Strong defences are necessary for our long-term security, but the capacity to attack is also a form of defence," he said. "We need to not only defend ourselves against attack, but dissuade people and states from targeting us in the first place."
He added: "Part of establishing deterrence will be making sure that whoever attacks us will know we are able to hit back."
Retaliating against cyberattacks is notoriously difficult and legally fraught, as attackers often mask their actions through other targets they have hacked – which can be anything from networks of home computers scattered across the world, meaning retaliation risks hitting home internet users in the UK.
At the highest end of sophistication is a national attacker compromising key servers of one country and using them to attack a third – in the hope of sparking a chain of retaliation between the two nations.
The UK rarely discusses any offensive cyber capabilities of its intelligence agencies, but some details of these longstanding capabilities emerged through documents leaked by Edward Snowden, while in 2011 then foreign secretary William Hague warned the UK would strike against would-be cyberattackers in an intervention similar to Osborne's this week.
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