The government IT centre, The National Infrastructure Security Co-ordination Centre (NISCC) has recently come under organised electronic assault. The NISCC exists to protect the critical national infrastructure that, if harmed, might ’cause large scale loss of life, have a serious impact on the national economy, have other grave social consequences for the community or be of immediate concern to the national government’. It is being bombarded regularly with a series of Trojan viruses that sought to penetrate any defence and infect as many computers as possible. The NISCC warn in a security briefing that ‘Once installed on a user machine, trojans may be used to obtain passwords, scan networks, exfiltrate information and launch further attacks’.

The attacks have been ongoing but have recently increased in intensity. The viruses are difficult to detect because they ‘use social engineering to appear credible, with subject lines often referring to news articles that would be of interest to the recipient. In fact they are ’spoofed’, making them appear to originate from trusted contacts’.