The truth about 'cyber-warriors' targeting Britain on a daily basis

Global conflict is no longer just about military hardware and warfare, foreign powers are targeting the West with sophisticated cyber-hacking programmes to steal key information

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(Image: Getty Images/iStockphoto)

Imagine your boss asking you to take hundreds of millions of pounds of your firm’s cash home to look after – and then leaving your door unlocked or a burglar-sized window open at night.

And when it goes missing think how quickly you would be sacked, your career halted abruptly and your reputation demolished. And how many “told you so’s” your security department would tell you.

Well this sort of thing is happening a lot, it's been going on for years, and it’s about to start happening a lot more - albeit in a far more subtle and sneaky way.

Some years ago a very senior UK security source confided in me that a foreign state web-hacking group had made off with hundreds of millions of pounds worth of aerospace technology.

The source told me the guilty party was likely closely linked to Beijing and then went into detail about why this particularly dangerous version of hybrid warfare was significant to the United Kingdom. 

British researchers had spent a fortune on developing this new technology, supposedly a major breakthrough in aerospace technology, but the exclusivity had been lost.

It was likely rogue hackers had been paid to infiltrate the company’s research and development department, which had been working on the technology for many years. And it may have just involved an unfortunate worker failing to switch off their laptop properly and ignoring cyber-security protocols.