Britain ‘building elite 2,000-strong cyber force’ to tackle Russia hacking threat
The new £250million digital defence team is also believed to be tasked with tackling terrorist cells and paedophile rings
A BRITISH cyber force unit designed to combat Russian hackers and terrorist groups is being created, according to reports.
The Ministry of Defence and GCHQ are said to be spending a whopping £250 million unit to build the elite digital defence team.
Experts will be recruited from the military, security services and industry to target all sorts of different threats, according to .
This will include criminal gangs, people-traffickers and paedophile rings as well as Russian hackers.
The unit will quadruple the number of Brits working in "offensive cyber-roles" and will massively increase security services' ability to disrupt computer networks.
And the report on the new unit also gave details on tactics used by Isis in Iraq and Syria.
Malware was used to block terrorists' access to data and fake news was distributed to cause confusion.
British cyber attacks even blocked cash transactions to hinder terrorists.
Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson is expected to formally announce the new cyber force soon.
A Government spokesman said: "The MoD and GCHQ have a long and proud history of working together, including on the National Offensive Cyber Programme.
"We are both committed to continuing to invest in this area, given the real threats the UK faces from a range of hostile actors."
The cyber force comes at a time when military tensions have been mounting with Russia in the wake of the Salisbury attack.
Robert Hannigan, ex-head of GCHQ, said: “With some nation states [and] criminal groups behaving very aggressively, you do need some capability to be destructive yourself in a targeted way to stop some of those things happening.”
In July, a parliamentary committee warned that UK ministers were failing to get to grip with the shortage in cyber security experts despite the "potentially severe implications" for national security.
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MPs and peers said the situation is of "serious concern", but the Government response lacks "urgency".
In a report, they warned the WannaCry attack in May 2017, which hit the NHS, showed the need to protect critical national infrastructure (CNI) from cyber threats.
But the Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy said: "We are struck by the Government's apparent lack of urgency in addressing the cyber security skills gap, which is of vital importance to both national security and the economy."
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