Sunday Times 2
Davos elites warned about catastrophic cyberattacks
View(s):DAVOS, Switzerland, Jan 24, (AFP) – Attacks on power plants, telecommunications and financial systems, even turning all of Los Angeles’ traffic lights green: Davos elites were warned today of the terrifying possibilities of modern cyber terrorism.
Eugene Kaspersky, who heads the Kaspersky Lab security group, said the possibilities of individuals being hacked would only increase in future as more devices, such as “smart” televisions, are hooked up to the Internet.
“What you call the Internet of Things, I call the Internet of Threats,” he told the assembled global political and business movers-and-shakers.
“The worst of the worst scenarios is an attack on a big infrastructure, a power plant. If there’s no power, the rest of the world doesn’t work,” Kaspersky cautioned. Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves said that criminals could bring about chaos in a much lower-level way.
“You can wreak havoc in all kinds of ways,” said Ilves, who added that it was the duty of governments to give citizens powerful encryption tools to protect their data.
Actress and poet Sarah Jones presents her performance 'The New Global Village' in the Swiss mountain resort of Davos yesterday. More than 1,500 business leaders and 40 heads of state or government attend the Jan. 21-24 meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF) to network and discuss big themes, from the price of oil to the future of the Internet. Reuters