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| Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne has warned ISIS are plotting against UK infrastructure |
TERRORISTS are plotting to kill Britons in a deadly cyberattack – targeted at the country's infrastructure, finance minister George Osborne will today announce.
Islamic State extremists are desperately trying to develop the capability to launch deadly cyber attacks against Britain's infrastructure, finance minister George Osborne will caution on Tuesday.
The Chancellor of the Exchequer is set to announce a Government plans to double the budget for cyber-security.
Mr Osborne – a close ally to Prime Minister David Cameron – said the terror attacks in Paris underscored the need to improve Britain's protections against electronic attack.
Islamic State this weekend claimed responsibility for a series of orchestrated terror attacks in the French capital which claimed the lives of 129 people.
Gunmen – each fitted with a suicide vest – targeted six different locations in central Paris, including the Stade de France where president Francois Hollande was watching the national team play a friendly match against Germany.
Terrorists also attacked restaurants, cafes and the Bataclan theatre where rock band Eagles of Death Metal were perfuming to a sell-out crowd.
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| Gunmen – each fitted with a suicide vest – targeted six different locations in central Paris |
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| Terrorists attacked restaurants, cafes and a theatre where Eagles of Death Metal was playing |
"ISIL are already using the Internet for hideous propaganda purposes; for radicalisation, for operational planning too," George Osborne said in excerpts of a speech he was due to give at Britain's GCHQ eavesdropping agency.
"They have not been able to use it to kill people yet by attacking our infrastructure through cyber attack," he said. "But we know they want it and are doing their best to build it."
The Chancellor said public spending on cyber-security would be almost doubled to a total of £1.9 billion over the period to 2020.
At the same time, Mr Osborne prepares to announce fresh overall spending cuts next week in a bid to return Britain to a budget surplus by the end of the decade.
The news comes after a Belgian Minister claimed the ISIS terrorists responsible for the Paris attacks communicated securely using a Sony Playstation 4.
"It is right that we choose to invest in our cyber defences even at a time when we must cut other budgets," he said. "The Internet represents a critical axis of potential vulnerability."
Prime Minister David Cameron said on Monday that the size of Britain's intelligence agency staff would be increased by 15 per cent.
Mr Osborne said the decision to ramp up cyber defence funding had been taken before Friday's bloodshed in Paris.
"The stakes could hardly be higher - if our electricity supply, or our air traffic control, or our hospitals were successfully attacked online, the impact could be measured not just in terms of economic damage but of lives lost."
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| The terror attacks in Paris over the weekend left 129 people dead and over 300 injured |
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| Countries around the world fell silent on Monday night and mourned the dead |
A new national cyber-security plan drawn up by the government would feature a dedicated force to ensure faster and more effective responses to major online attacks.
The force would be based at GCHQ in Cheltenham, southwest England.
Other elements of the plan included possible cooperation between Internet service providers, with help from the government, to fend off malware attacks and block bad addresses used against British Internet users, as well as a new institute to train coders, Osborne said.
British broadband provider TalkTalk suffered a cyber attack in October which affected 157,000 customers.
This month, Britain and US authorities carried out a drill with leading banks to test their response to a cyber incident in the financial sector.
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