Prague, March 15 (CTK) – The Czech military intelligence service (VZ) is seeking professional hackers for its new unit to defend computer networks as well as actively attack cyber-pirates, daily Lidove noviny (LN) writes yesterday.
It says the Czech Republic is preparing for “a cyber war.”
The VZ is therefore trying to attract young computer experts for its nascent National Centre of Cyber Forces, LN says.
“Such information is very sensitive in view of the character of the National Centre of Cyber Forces’ future activities, and it will not be released to the public,” Petr Medek, spokesman for the Defence Ministry, told LN, in reaction to its question about the centre’s work and the number of its employees.
However, LN sources say a few dozen experts are to work in the centre.
According to the valid National Strategy of Cyber Security, the new VZ unit will be fully operable in 2020. The Defence Ministry will annually release 500 million crowns for its work, LN writes.
“Cyber defence works actively against attackers. In the case of an attack, it is to find its source and take relevant technical steps to halt it,” Medek added.
“The Czech Republic must be able to avert a cyber attack by its own means,” NBU chief Dusan Navratil said.
This is why the NBU opened its own National Centre of Cyber Security with some 30 experts in 2014 to protect the “critical infrastructure,” such as communication networks of power plants and state offices, LN writes.
Both centres, operated by the VZ and the NBU, are to create a uniform system of cyber defence of the Czech Republic in the future, LN adds.
The necessity to secure the Czech computer networks and form a unit of “state hackers” became apparent in connection with the conflict in Ukraine in 2014. The activity of Russian hackers intensified, also in reaction to the Western sanctions against Moscow.
In the summer of 2014, Russian pirates hacked some big U.S. banks. These attacks make the European members of NATO, including the Czech Republic, concerned, and consequently most of them have focused on cyber security, LN writes.
($1=24.324 crowns)
