LONDON, (Reuters) – Cyberspace is likely to be a key battleground for states in the 21st century but recruiting those with the technical skills to fight there and retaining their loyalty will be a tough task.
From hacking attacks aimed at information theft and commercial espionage to the Stuxnet computer worm believed to have been designed to attack Iran’s nuclear programme last year, information warfare is rising rapidly.
Code making and breaking has been a prized skill in the art of espionage since ancient times but the swiftly moving pace of technology and the sometimes erratic personas of those at the cutting edge pose many challenges.
“There is absolutely not enough of them, you need an order of magnitude… more than we have at the moment,” said John Bassett, associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute in London and a former senior official at Britain’s Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ).
In both Western countries and emerging powers such as China and Russia — seen as viewing cyber warfare as a key area of interest — governments have been recruiting hard through competitions, universities and sometimes social media sites.
A Reuters special report last week showed some U.S. experts were concerned Beijing was already pulling ahead in the cyber espionage field, revealing that proxy talks between the two powers were already underway on avoiding unintended escalation.
In an era of heightened confrontation and technical advances, retention is a challenge. Skilled specialists can burn out, be poached by the private sector or can be tempted by criminal or anti-establishment causes. Many of the best may have difficult, sometimes eccentric personalities.
HUMAN FACTOR
A young U.S. Army intelligence analyst, Bradley Manning, is widely suspected to have been the main source for Wikileaks of classified U.S. files. Some worry about what experienced government-trained “cyber warriors” might do.
“If they go rogue in some way, that’s most unfortunate,” said Bassett. “You can’t rule it out… The central factor in all of this… is the human factor… Part of managing them is that these are going to be slightly edgy people.”
Some say states are running to catch up with private companies who have long been left largely to fend for themselves against criminal and individual cyber attacks and hacking.
“We’ve seen more and more (government) organisations taking people on secondment, bright sparks coming in for a few years,” said Julian Midwinter, vice president at information security firm I2. “Partnership is the only way to get that capability fast enough.”
I2 says it is itself a good example of such a partnership. Based in the English university town of Cambridge, it is at the cutting edge of analysing huge quantities of data intercepted by law enforcement and intelligence agencies and says its software helped track down former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein in 2003.
