BBC News - Anti-cyber threat centre launched

[Roland Perry]

In article <F6FD81DC-6A74-48F8-B3D0-F56C23E01C9B at batten.eu.org>, Ian 
Batten <igb at batten.eu.org> writes
>What about the claim of large off-the-books losses?  Well, there's a 
>vague suggestion of that:
>
>One major London listed company had incurred revenue losses of £800m as 
>a result of cyber attack from a hostile state because of commercial 
>disadvantage in contractual negotiations.
>
>Translation: they bid for a contract with a total contract value of 
>£800m and lost to a foreign company.  Well, there's a million and one 
>reasons why that could happen, starting with your price being too high 
>or your delivery schedule being too slow, and ending with your salesman 
>committing some terrible faux-pas over dinner.  It's impossible to 
>ascribe one explanation, but obviously "it was shadowy hackers that 
>lost us the business" is a very easy excuse for everyone involved

A hacking scenario could be that competitors got sight of the internal 
bid papers and crucially managed to use that to their advantage in the 
late stages of the bid.
-- 
Roland Perry