Britain ‘braced for massive cyber attack from Putin’s hackers as revenge for sanctions’

dailystar.co.uk:

Vladimir Putin’s hackers as an act of revenge for Russian sanctions, it has been reported.British cyber intelligence is on high alert anticipating hackers attempting to infiltrate Whitehall computers, the Sun reports.NATO systems and Ukrainian networks are also targets under threat by the Russian hackers.A senior intelligence source told the paper that the UK was “braced” for retaliation and was surprised it had not happened yet.NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg warned last week that a cyber attack on NATO members could spark a wider war, by triggering Article 5.

He said: “We have stated cyber attacks can trigger Article 5, but we have never got into the position where we give a potential adversary the privilege of defining exactly when we trigger Article 5.” Another unnamed NATO official said: “Allies also recognise that the impact of significant malicious cumulative cyber activities might, in certain circumstances, be considered as an armed attack. "We will not speculate on how serious a cyberattack would have to be in order to trigger a collective response. "Any response could include diplomatic and economic sanctions, cyber measures, or even conventional forces, depending on the nature of the attack.” To stay up to date with all the latest news, make sure you sign up to one of our newsletters here. Last week also saw Anonymous declare a cyber war against Putin and successfully managed to shut down the website of RT – Russia's main state broadcaster.

They also targeted the websites of the Russian government, the Kremlin, and the Russian defence ministry. The hacking group used a sophisticated cyber attack known as "distributed denial-of-service" (DDoS), which involves flooding a site with hundreds of computer systems so.