By Umberto Bacchi
May 7 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Cities embracing
technology to improve urban life risk falling prey to hackers,
Britain's cyber security agency warned on Friday, urging local
authorities to ensure smart cities are armed with digital
defences.
Criminals and foreign governments can target technologies
deployed to improve city services such as sensors and
internet-connected devices to steal sensitive data and cause
disruption, said Britain's National Cyber Security Centre
(NCSC).
"New digital technology is going to improve our lives and
help protect the environment, but it is essential we take steps
now to make connected places more resilient to cyber attacks,"
Digital Infrastructure Minister Matt Warman said in a statement.
From sensors monitoring pollution to traffic lights designed
to cut congestion, technology can help cities cut planet-warming
emissions and make services more efficient, the NCSC said, as it
published new cyber security guidance for local authorities.
But as more services become interconnected, the risks
increase, said the NCSC - the tech security arm of Britain's
eavesdropping agency GCHQ, warning that failures could lead to
"breaches of privacy" and even "endanger" residents.
"The 'smarter' cities become, the more valuable a target
they will become because more data will be available to
compromise and more disruption can be caused," said Alexander
Hicks, a computer science researcher at University College
London (UCL).
To illustrate the risks, NCSC Technical Director Ian Levy
cited cult 1969 film "The Italian Job", in which a professor
creates a gridlock by switching magnetic storage tapes used for
traffic control, allowing thieves to escape with a haul of gold.
"A similar 'gridlock' attack on a 21st century city would
have catastrophic impacts on the people who live and work there,
and criminals wouldn't likely need physical access to the
traffic control system to do it," Levy wrote in a blog post.
Some cities around the world have already suffered from
crippling hacks.
Last September, German prosecutors opened a homicide
investigation after a woman died when her ambulance had to be
diverted because the first hospital it arrived at in Duesseldorf
was unable to admit her due to a cyber attack.
And in 2019, hackers demanding ransom shut down the cyber
network of Johannesburg City Council, months after hitting the
South African city's energy distribution company, in an attack
that left customers struggling to access a number of services.
Such recent incidents have been a wake-up call for
businesses and authorities, which have often prioritised
developing new tech services over security, said Enrico
Mariconti, a lecturer in security and crime science at UCL.
"For a very long time security has been the annoying part
when creating a product," he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation
in an online interview.
"What we're seeing now is that with breaches becoming more
and more common, the cost of designing from the beginning
something more secure is much less than that of getting hit just
once."
(Reporting by Umberto Bacchi @UmbertoBacchi in Tbilisi; Editing
by Helen Popper. Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation,
the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers the lives of
people around the world who struggle to live freely or fairly.
Visit http://news.trust.org)