"I'm afraid it will be the end of the world as we know it."

So spoke Eugene Kaspersky on Wednesday, whose lab discovered the Flame virus that has attacked computers in Iran and elsewhere in the Middle East.

If you read my book CyberKill, you are probably scratching your head and wonder how I could be such a prognosticator.

Luck, perhaps.

Kaspersky went on to say:

“It’s not cyber war, it’s cyber terrorism and I’m afraid it’s just the beginning of the game … Kaspersky told reporters at a Tel Aviv University cyber security conference. ”I’m scared, believe me,” he said.

Why is he scared?

“Flame is extremely complicated but I think many countries can do the same or very similar, even countries that don’t have enough of the expertise at the moment. They can employ engineers or kidnap them, or employ ‘hacktivists’,” he said.

Kaspersky said governments must cooperate to stop such attacks, as they have done with nuclear, biological and chemical weapons. Operating systems must be redesigned, he added.

“Software that manages industrial systems or transportation or power grids or air traffic, they must be based on secure operating systems. Forget about Microsoft, Linux, Unix.”

Now add that fear to this, and I’d say the cyberwar is going to get very very interesting.

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