Attacks on computers could lead to 'global shock'

Co-ordinated attacks on critical computer systems could create a perfect storm with "catastrophic" global effects, a study has found.

A succession of multiple cyber attacks could "become a full-scale global shock" on a par with a pandemic and the collapse of the world financial system, the report by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) said.

Contingency plans to recover systems should be put in place and cyber-security policies should "encompass the needs of all citizens and not just central government facilities", the report said.

"What should concern policy-makers are combinations of events: two different cyber-events occurring at the same time, or a cyber-event taking place during some other form of disaster or attack," the report said. "In that eventuality, 'perfect storm' conditions could exist."

But the report, part of a wider OECD project on Future Global Shocks, found "few single foreseeable cyber-related events have the capacity to become a full-scale global shock".

One such event may be triggered by "a very large-scale solar flare (bursts of energy from the sun), which physically destroys key communications components such as satellites, cellular base stations and switches", the report adds.

The last major event was in 1859, and the next sun-spot peak is expected in 2012-13.

Another could involve "a hitherto unknown fundamental flaw" in the technical building blocks of the internet "over which agreement for remedy could not be quickly reached", it added.

The report's co-author Professor Peter Sommer, of the London School of Economics, also said lurid language and poor analysis were inhibiting government planning for cyber protection.