HM Treasury Regularly Witnesses 'hostile' Cyber Attacks

Recently, the Google's Zeitgeist conference was held on 16 May 2011. George Osborne, UK's Chancellor of the Exchequer, highlighted during the conference that, during 2010 "hostile intelligence agencies" were accountable for several grave and pre-planned efforts to compromise the Treasury's computer and access personal and financial information. He stated that, these were element of a vast number of cyber attacks on government networks, which overall got over 20,000 malicious e-mails monthly, as reported by Guardian on May 17, 2011.

Previously during 2011, UK Home Secretary William Hague declared that attackers had effectively compromised government networks with the Zeus trojan or "Zbot", as reported by Naked Security on May 16, 2011.

Certainly, majority of the attacks believed to be targeting the UK government are targeting other organizations and businesses across the globe also. Governments and companies equally face the challenge of protecting their systems, as well as their private information from the cybercrooks.

The chancellor notified the Google Zeitgeist conference regarding an e-mail dispatched to the Treasury and its international collaborators during 2010. The e-mail was attached with a document. After few minutes, the similar e-mail appeared to have been again sent to the same distribution list.

Mr. Osborne stated that, as a matter of fact, in the second e-mail, the genuine attachment was exchanged with a file including malicious code. He added that, it would have simply appeared to the receiver of the e-mail that the attachment had been dispatched twice, as reported by FT on May 16, 2011.

The probable intent, as with nearly all cyber attacks on state IT systems, was to gain access to few of the several market information that the Treasury holds, making it one of the most famous targets for such strikes.

During early 2011, UK Home Secretary William Hague announced that attackers had effectively compromised government networks with Zeus Trojan, as reported by Naked Security on May 16, 2011.

Mr. Osborne stated that, during February 2011, William Hague, Foreign Secretary elaborated a series of efforts by foreign intelligence agency to access market sensitive information from British systems, as reported by THE WALL STREET JOURNAL on May 16, 2011.

Related article: Hawaiian Legislature Hobbled By Computer Virus

» SPAMfighter News - 5/26/2011