Europe's refrigerators were also hacked... British Army dispatches ‘hacker-catching troops’ overseas

Electromagnetic unit commander: “Efforts to track and block attacks before large-scale attacks”

(London = Yonhap News) Correspondent Kim Ji-yeon = As cyber security threats grow in Europe, the British military is sending troops overseas to track hackers, daily The Times reported on the 8th (local time).

In an interview with this newspaper, Major General Mike Peyers, commander of the UK's Defense Cyber ​​Magnetic Force (DCEMF), which was newly established last year, said that troops are being dispatched overseas to block enemy countries at the planning stage before they carry out a lethal attack on British defense.

“In the past, we defended our territory, but now we defend it forward across our network,” he said. “We are trying to track our adversaries where they are preparing before they can target British military systems.”

This could be the same scenario when Russian hackers try to infect servers in European countries.

Fayers said a growing number of Army, Air Force and Navy troops are being sent to Europe and Asia to intercept hacking plots, and "tracking units" are being sent to work where countries agree.

They can be deployed not only by land but also by ship or aircraft to track state actors or criminals.

In Europe, including the UK, concerns about cyber attacks have increased, with recent hacking of supermarkets and blood center refrigerators.

Director Fayers said of the refrigerator hacking incident, "It shows how big a scale and how fast we are in trouble in the cyber domain."

“Our adversaries are very sophisticated. This is not just a Ministry of Defense problem, it is a problem for the whole of the UK,” he said. “Artificial intelligence (AI) is exploiting vulnerabilities at an unprecedented rate, where previously it would have taken days to fix a weakness, now we have to respond within tens of minutes.”

The British military is increasing its alert for cyber attacks.

Last month, Defense Secretary Wes Streeting urged all households to stock up on daily necessities such as bottled water and canned food in preparation for cyber attacks.

In May last year, the British Ministry of Defense announced that 90,000 cyber attacks by state-linked forces had occurred over the previous two years.