BBC News reports: “London is hosting a major international conference on the threat from cyber security attacks.

Representatives of 60 nations are gathering to discuss how to tackle the rising levels of cybercrime.

Foreign Secretary William Hague convened the London Conference on Cyberspace, and urged a ‘global coordinated response’ on policy.

However, Wikipedia founder, Jimmy Wales, warned that ill-advised interventions posed their own risks.

The event comes a day after intelligence agency GCHQ warned that cyber-attacks on the UK were at ‘disturbing’ levels.

Experts attending the two-day conference include EU digital supremo Neelie Kroes, Cisco’s vice-president Brad Boston and Joanna Shields, a senior executive at Facebook…” (Cyber-attacks can bring a nation down overnight. If they attack the grid system of a nation, all electrically operated and controlled systems could and will often fail from coast to coast — I Timothy 3:1. Also – “Nations will be in distress with perplexity [mass confusion] – Luke 21:25. See also the next three reports.)

BBC News reports: “The UK has been subject to a ‘disturbing’ number of cyber-attacks, the director of communications intelligence agency GCHQ has said.

Sensitive data on government computers has been targeted, along with defence, technology and engineering firms’ designs, Iain Lobban said in the Times.

There was a ‘significant’ unsuccessful internet-based attack on Foreign Office computer systems this summer, he added…

Foreign Secretary William Hague convened the London Conference on Cyberspace after criticism that ministers are failing to take the threat from cyber warfare seriously enough.

It aims to bring together political leaders, such as US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and EU digital supremo Neelie Kroes, with leading cyber security experts and technology entrepreneurs such as Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales and Cisco vice-president Brad Boston.

Mr. Hague believes a ‘global coordinated response’ is required to forge policy on cyber development.

Writing in the Times, Mr. Lobban said such an inclusive approach was vital.

‘The volume of e-crime and attacks on government and industry systems continues to be disturbing,’ he wrote.

‘I can attest to attempts to steal British ideas and designs – in the IT, technology, defence, engineering and energy sectors, as well as other industries – to gain commercial advantage or to profit from secret knowledge of contractual arrangements.

‘Such intellectual property theft doesn’t just cost the companies concerned; it represents an attack on the UK’s continued economic wellbeing.’…”

SpaceDaily.com reports: “Computers in Japan’s lower house of parliament were hit by cyber-attacks from a server based in China that left information exposed for at least a month, a report said.

Passwords and other information could have been compromised in the attacks, which began in July but were not reported to security authorities until the end of August, the Asahi Shimbun said, without citing sources.

The government’s top spokesman Osamu Fujimura, chief cabinet secretary and a lower house member, said he was not previously aware of the reported attack but that the government was investigating the issue.

However, the Asahi said that lower house officials told lawmakers and parliamentary staff to change their network IDs and passwords, over fears that security had been breached.

The Asahi said politicians’ computers and a lower house server contracted a ‘Trojan horse’ virus containing a programme that allowed a China-based server to steal passwords and other information…”

BBC News reports: “China and Russia are the most active perpetrators of economic cyber-espionage against US companies, a US intelligence report says.

The report specifically cited Chinese ‘actors’ and Russian intelligence as the top culprits.

Robert Bryant, US national counter-intelligence executive, told reporters that online spying was ‘a quiet menace to our economy’.

Both China and Russia’s embassies have denied the allegations.

The report, titled Foreign Spies Stealing US Economic Secrets in Cyberspace, says both private firms and cybersecurity experts have reported an ‘onslaught’ of computer network intrusions that they say originated from China.

However, they have not been able to track the ultimate culprit of the intrusions.

Google said in 2010 that it had lost data to Chinese hackers.

According to the report, attacks from Russia are a ‘distant second’ to those from China, but were ‘extensive’ and ‘sophisticated’.

The proliferation of methods used to hack into the computer systems of both research organisations and private companies also means that it is harder to identify and track who is stealing information…”