Prepare for more cyber attacks, Scots expert warns, as 'be ready' campaign launched
Defence Secretary Wes Streeting urges public to get ready for cyber emergencies as PHP disruption continues
A Scottish AI expert has warned more cyber security flaws could be exploited by criminals “in hours rather than days and weeks”, after the UK government launched an awareness campaign on preparing for an attack.
Defence Secretary Wes Streeting said on Thursday households and businesses should prepare for “increasingly sophisticated cyber attacks” and potential disruption to essential supplies.
The government launched its “be ready” campaign to provide advice to the public, including by gathering supplies such as food and medicine and finding out how to volunteer to support communities during an emergency.
The warnings came as 32 government services were offline and four partially unavailable while work was carried out to address potential cybersecurity issues.
Organisations around the world have been scrambling to fix a critical security flaw in the programming language PHP used by the majority of websites.
Charles McCrimmon, a lecturer in computing and digital media at University of the Highlands and Islands (UHI) North, West and Hebrides, told The Scotsman: “We can expect to see more situations like this in the future.
“Other hidden but significant security flaws will inevitably exist elsewhere, and as AI tools become more powerful and more people learn to use them, we’ll see many more of these weaknesses being found.
“A weakness being found is not necessarily a bad thing, at least for larger websites. They have capacity to address it before something catastrophic happens.
“My biggest concern would be for smaller organisations who are running sites which are not actively maintained. Many of these groups may not even realise they use PHP as part of their systems, meaning we are absolutely not out of the woods on this one.
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“We also need to remember that cyber criminals have access to the same tools that those attempting to thwart them have. It means they are able to find and exploit weaknesses more quickly than ever before. It means the gap between a system flaw becoming public and attackers trying to exploit it is now measured in hours, rather than days and weeks.”
Mr Streeting warned of the need to be ready for the possibility that businesses could be hit by cyber attacks that knock out supply chains.
He said: “It’s really important that we ask households and businesses, are they prepared, are they ready, do they know how they would respond in the event of everyday challenges that might manifest themselves?
“But we’ll also need to take the country a step further and ask them are they prepared for increasingly sophisticated cyber attacks on our businesses, are they prepared for the eventuality that there may be disruption to essential supply chains caused by hostile state actors or terrorists?
“How would we cope if the payment systems at the local supermarket went down?
“Those are the sorts of everyday challenges and threats that we could face, and it’s right that we ask the country to be ready for those things and ask everyone to do their bit.”
The Defence Secretary was speaking at the opening of Rheinmetall UK’s Shropshire facility, where tank barrels will be produced in the UK for the first time in 20 years.
The emergency preparedness campaign was launched on the same day, with the new advice being offered marking the first stage of a three-year campaign.
It aims to make households feel better prepared for disruptive events, such as severe weather, and comes in the wake of heatwaves, drought and fires that have hit the UK during the summer.
The steps advised include checking you have essentials such as three days’ worth of food and water as well as checking eligibility and signing up for the priority services register for specific support during outages.
Security Minister Dan Jarvis said: “Those who can follow this advice should follow this advice.
“By taking simple steps to be ready for everyday emergencies like severe storms, people can reduce pressure on emergency services, helping them prioritise people who need more support in an emergency.
“This is just the sort of community-focused campaign the UK needs to improve our resilience as a nation.
“It will bring us into line with European counterparts, where advice like this is a normal part of everyday life.”
Downing Street on Thursday said no large UK public-facing critical services have been affected by the PHP issue, but some “limited” government websites had gone dark while issues are resolved.
National Cyber Security Centre experts were working with OpenAI, whose technology was used to discover the vulnerabilities, and partners around the globe to address potential problems, a No 10 spokeswoman said.
Tech minister Baroness Lloyd of Effra told the House of Lords: “The information I have is that 32 Government services are unavailable and four are partially unavailable.”
She said that “has largely resulted from precautionary measures taken to protect systems while security updates and mitigations are applied”.
The Downing Street spokeswoman said: “Work has already taken place across Government to identify and fix potential exposures to our systems, and our experts are continuing to work closely with both OpenAI and international partners on this issue.
“No large public-facing critical services are being affected by the exercise, but some limited services may temporarily be offline while security work is carried out.
“But this does not mean they were hacked, and work continues to resolve any issues.”
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