Security mogul Eugene Kaspersky has declared cyber warfare as "the internet's greatest threat."
Kaspersky believes that cyber warfare has leaped over threats such as cyber crime and privacy issues to become the most dangerous issue facing the web. He spoke at the Australian Cebit convention about the potential damage of cyber super weapons and the future of internet security.
"Cyber weapons can damage a physical object as badly as a traditional weapon," Kaspersky was quoted as saying during his keynote presentation in Sydney.
"It is a realistic scenario against any country because we all have the same systems. All it takes is the wrong people with the right motives."
While both the public and private sector have been scrambling in recent years to protect critical infrastructure against cyber attacks, experts have suggested that most hypothetical attacks would likely be limited in scope to a local or regional scale.
Kaspersky argues that the only way to prevent a catastrophic series of attacks in the future would be for countries to come together and sign international pacts against the use of cyber weapons.
"I'm afraid that there's only one way that they can be protected and that's international agreements against cyber weapons, same as was done with nuclear weapons, chemical weapons and biological weapons," Kaspersky said.
Both China and the US showed positive signs for peace when they held cyber security excercises earlier this year in a sign of solidarity.
During his speech Kaspersky pointed to the Stuxnet virus as a barometer for the power of cyber warfare. The highly-sophisticated virus successfullyinfected Iran's nuclear programme and is believed to have caused critical damage to uranium-enrichment equipment.
