The articles by your diplomatic editor on possible Russian cyber-attacks on British political parties during an election (Report, 13 March) and alleged Russian cyber-attacks on government office and the Labour party in Norway (Report, 13 March) focus on state interruptions. But cyber-infiltration can also be achieved by malevolent individuals and groups, including terrorists. The literature now warns that not just digital televisions are attractive to the CIA (Report, 8 March) but smart meters, currently being rolled out to all households in the UK, may be infiltrated.
One alarming academic article by Dheeraj Gurugubelli and Dr Chris Foreman of Purdue University sets out how a targeted attack on smart meters could potentially result in the shutdown of the power grid, disabling energy delivery systems. (They argue that “the compromise of even a single smart meter through focused attack or reverse engineering potentially provides access to the AMI network as a whole. This, coupled with the extensive use of multiple wireless technologies and geographic dispersion, results in an attack surface of unprecedented scale.”
A more recent commentary in SmartGrid Awareness concludes “it may take an actual catastrophic hacking event where millions of smart meters are turned off in a way that they cannot be turned back on for smart meter proponents to acknowledge that these meters … are too dangerous to have ever been deployed.” Are ministers aware of this vulnerability to the UK national infrastructure?
Dr David Lowry
Senior research fellow, Institute for Resource and Security Studies, Cambridge, Massachusetts
General media coverage of Wiki–Leaks’ exposure of CIA hacking tools is, indeed, more widespread than was your coverage of the Snowden documents in 2013 (When will MPs do their jobs and protect our privacy?, 9 March). Ewen MacAskill wonders whether this will, at last, lead to increased public concern at “mass surveillance” in the wake of the UK government providing itself with the most intrusive surveillance powers in the world, courtesy of the Investigatory Powers Act (IPA) 2016. The agencies have tried to explain why they need bulk collection powers, and David Anderson, in his August 2016 report, conducted a systematic evaluation of their arguments, but critical examination of these practices must continue. Since the potential for intrusive surveillance increases rapidly, the need for energetic and effective oversight is clear, as MacAskill argues. It remains to be seen whether the IPA’s new Investigatory Powers Commission can do a better job than the various previous commissioners. Though this new body will have technical expertise, it is unfortunate that it is responsible both for authorising surveillance and for monitoring/overseeing its use – these are very different processes and should be carried out by separate organisations.
Peter Gill
Honorary visiting fellow, University of Leicester
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