LONDON: Cyber attacks of the kind Estonia claims it recently faced from Russia are on the increase, but governments globally have been slow to protect themselves from the growing threat, experts say.

Estonia called on the European Union and Nato to intervene with Russia last week, saying the websites of state institutions were brought down amid a row over the removal of a Soviet war memorial in Tallinn.

US Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte warned in comments published in the Financial Times newspaper on Friday that said cyber attacks are likely to increase in the future.

Experts in Britain and Ireland said they agreed with the assessment and warned that official websites may be among the most vulnerable.

“Yes, I think that cyber attacks will become more of an issue,” said Professor Jonathan Zittrain, an Internet governance and regulation expert at Oxford University’s Oxford Internet Institute.

“Cyber attacks of the denial of service variety – as has happened in Estonia – are only the most basic form of network attack.

“Commercial sites whose income depends on remaining online can invest money to thwart and respond to sudden and suspicious spikes in traffic, while brochure-like websites for government agencies may not be so robust.” The dispute between Estonia and Russia is not the first to have spilled over into online hostilities.

China and Japan’s long-running spat over school textbooks, when Beijing accused Tokyo of approving works which glossed over wartime atrocities, led to individuals from each country launching online attacks against each other.

And in the Middle East, a “cyber jihad” between Israeli and Palestinian web users has played out alongside developments on the political stage, with Israeli government sites being targeted by some Palestinians.

But Doctor Maura Conway, a lecturer at Dublin City University in Ireland who specialises in terrorism and the Internet, said that when attacks are carried out by states, they tend to be very careful to “cloak” their identities, unlike more casual attacks by individuals.

“In instances where you get attacks carried out by states or agents of states, they will be a lot more IT-savvy and they will cover up,” she said.

Conway added that powerful states like the United States were the most concerned about the potential of being targeted by cyber attacks because they were “extremely reliant” on IT infrastructures which offer “serious potential targets”. She said she thought governments in general had been “pretty slow on the uptake” to legislate against potential cyber attacks.—AFP