UK sends cyber force to help allies as disruption spreads across Europe

The UK is sending specialist troops abroad to disrupt cyber attacks, a senior officer has said.

Maj Gen Mike Fayers, the commander of the Defence Cyber and Electromagnetic Force (DCEMF), said the “hunt force” is increasingly being seconded to countries across Europe and Asia to disrupt hacking plots in their infancy.

There are concerns that two meetings involving world leaders due to take place in Dublin later this week could be subjected to attempts after a series of bomb hoaxes in the build-up. Authorities are treating the risk of an attack or security incident as "substantial".

Asked about the potential for cyber attacks and whether the UK government was taking extra precautions for the high level European Political Summit meeting on Thursday, the prime minister’s official spokesman told The National it was an issue taken “extremely seriously”.

“There are a number of different operational ways in which our agencies deal with that threat,” he said.

Maj Gen Fayers said such is the sensitivity of his troops' missions - involving specially trained British soldiers, sailors and aviators - that they require approval from Wes Streeting, the Defence Secretary.

“Whereas historically we have defended on our territory, we are now defending ourselves forward of our own networks,” he told The Times.

“We are trying to hunt for our adversaries in places where they prepare before they target UK military systems. We call them a hunt force.”

He spoke after supermarkets and other sites across Europe were hit by suspected cyber attacks.

Attacks have hit German electricity substations and airports, and defence-related sites in ​the Baltic region.

Show caption: Frozen goods are loaded into shopping carts to be thrown awa…

At the same time, a hoax email campaign disrupted air travel across the continent, with those behind it saying it was “small part of what awaits Europe in the near future”.

The Irish authorities said an investigation was under way to determine who was behind the campaign after the country’s national broadcaster RTE was sent a threatening email. The email was claimed by someone calling themselves “Mikhail Andropov”.

Irish Prime Minister Micheal Martin has said the country's Cyber Security Centre will be part of a security operation being mounted for two political summits being held in Dublin this week.

More than 50 heads of state and leaders of international organisations will visit Dublin for the European Political Community summit on Thursday, followed the next day by an informal meeting of the EU Council.

“We’re confident that [the event] will go off safely,” he said. “I would say it’s the largest ever security operation in the history of the state. It would be larger than the visit of a US president, for example.”

Mr Martin said it was too early to say who was responsible for the hoaxes, but the increase in hybrid attacks witnessed across Europe in recent times was undoubtedly linked to Russia.

“As far back as the Russian invasion of Ukraine, since then the European continent has changed,” he said.

“The level of what we call hybrid attacks, the volume of those attacks have increased exponentially, and the bulk of those were felt in the eastern part of Europe, in the Baltics, in Poland.”

Finding out who is behind the spate of hoax emails, and determining if they are being co-ordinated or could be the work of copycats involves tracing the authors.

Show caption: Irish broadcaster RTE was sent a threatening email. AFP

The message sent to broadcasters from “Mikhail Andropov” said that “we experimented with multithreading, and we succeeded in causing widespread panic, as well as forcing European authorities to spend a fortune on all these procedures”.

Multithreading is a concept in computing that allows multiple threads to run concurrently while producing simultaneous mailed-out messages aimed at recipients as individuals. The intention is to provoke organisational panic.

The authors promised systemic chaos, in the message seen by the Irish media bosses.

“Very soon, we will be blowing up your airplanes, cruise ships, subway stations and trains. In the meantime, I recommend taking a vacation by plane while you still have the chance,” it said.