Cyber attacks, a major risk

An outlook on cyber threats in Romania

România Internațional, 04.03.2016, 13:39

“The level of cyber threats has increased with every year passing by. And this growth is both significant and qualitative” says Gabriel Mazilu, the deputy director of the CYBERINT National Center. This structure was set up in 2008 within the Romanian Intelligence Service. Citizens are getting more and more dependent on the cyber space, in the context of digitization of objects such as cameras, audio systems or working agendas. Gabriel Mazilu talked on Radio Romania about the importance of cyber security:

“Cyber space brings great advantages as well as various vulnerabilities targeting both regular citizens and states viewed as entities. From this point of view, cyber security needs to be a state priority, first and foremost of the state and also of the private, commercial sector, because citizens can be helped or advised on how to avoid the dangers of cyber space. As a rule, cyber criminals are not regular people, they are professionals, and that is why the state needs to protect its citizens. We intend to counteract the actions of cyber criminals with the help of experts trained and used by the state for this very purpose”.

Financial damage caused by cyber crime is substantial and on the rise, being estimated, at global level, at tens of billions of dollars. And Romania is known as a source of hackers. Known all over the world, the Romanian hackers have penetrated the websites of such giants as NASA or Kaspersky, Youtube, Yahoo or the British Royal Navy. But there are Romanians who have turned hacking into a hobby, with positive consequences for the big companies, in the sense that they identify the companies’ vulnerabilities and help company officials secure them.

Romania is also the country that gave the world Bitdefender, a cyber security giant. The Romanian Government has a plan meant to train experts in cyber security. Actually the government intends to introduce courses on cyber security in the school curricula, and to set up specialized departments in the academic and post-academic education system. Gabriel Mazilu talks about 4 types of cyber aggressors: state actors, namely highly professional cyber criminals with the highest impact on national security, actors from the organized crime environment, extremists and terrorist groups:

“Cyber space, despite appearances, is not mainly a technical space, it is actually a combination between technology and human intuition, that kind of intuition defined as social engineering. Criminals use all sorts of events in the life of the society to anticipate people’s needs and thus exploit them. For instance, Valentine’s Day is a good opportunity for cyber criminals to send false messages or e-mails, which, once opened, can destroy the computers’ hard disk. From this point of view, the technological level is so good that regular citizens cannot protect themselves without specialized applications, without support from state institutions.”

Gabriel Mazilu pleads for specialized legislation in the field of cyber security meant to set a national norm, which should entail coherent and sustained actions by all public and private institutions in Romania. The draft cyber security law has these days been under public debate. Here is Gabriel Mazilu back at the microphone with details:

“The law is useful because it sets a standard of validity, reliability and credibility. From this standpoint, the regulations should make a distinction between a well meaning provider and an ill meaning one. The process of regulation in the cyber space is more advanced in the countries that we consider landmarks in the field. Many of these countries have already issued a second set of laws on cyber security and some of them a third package of laws regarding their national strategy on cyber security. The respective regulations have not damaged the state and have not caused economic or social downturns. Actually, experts believe that the phenomenon will have the same evolution as in the case of air travel. The security measures for air travel, although they have been stricter and stricter from one year to the next, have not discouraged air travel, on the contrary, they have boosted it, because air travel has become safer”.

Romania’s geo-strategic position as well as its EU and NATO membership are factors leading to an increase in the level of cyber threats, explains Gabriel Mazilu, the deputy manager of the CYBERINT National Centre. He went on to say that from this point of view Romania is, alongside other European states, a clear target of cyber attacks, not a collateral victim.

(Translated by L. Simion)