the web war. spam filtering group clash across the internet and what some are claiming is the biggest cyber attack ever to hit life online. cypriot banks reopened under paralyzing capital control restrictions well the threat of a massive government grab hangs heavily over thousands of businesses. as the bloody civil war brings more devastation in syria fears grow strong in the u.k. that some of its muslims nationals who were allegedly fighting on the rebel side may bring the conflict. but the largest hunger strike in america's war on terror a prison. he says the inmates are cut off from their basic rights and

to waste away behind bars. rocket. jets three cosmonauts to the international space station in record time and if all goes to plan they say before their ice cream melts stories another still to come here an. international news is coming from a studio in moscow this is where the twenty four hours a day a war appears to be waging across the internet it began when the anti spam group called spamhaus put the web hosting company cyber bunker on its blacklist the host is allegedly struck with a hacker attack of unprecedented scale according to spamhaus the assault was so powerful it slowed internet access worldwide new video agency ruptly helped us get

in touch with companies is the attack in spokesman and he says the scale of the strike is massively exaggerated by cloud flare a company that promotes internet security. the whole internet is a little program the only thing that they don't count are some issues of the moment you're going to change work or where it's basically all of that blood flair stuff could not handle the attack on spamhaus and they tried to make it seem like the entire momentum of the exchange of them going into another exchange went down because of that but this is not the case goes deep into the graphic they are the result of gondor over them all and then the. graphics software that makes them grow off of basically zero zero zero as a straight line because it grew. down soft enough and sought a security expert andy who also when i spoke to him in the early he said side the bunkum may have ended up as collateral damage in the fight against spam which in

the end would benefit the internet in a lot i'm not entirely sure where you can draw the line spamhaus provides a service which starts blacklist domains not people sometimes they get it wrong and sometimes they do to blacklist people or maybe shouldn't be blacklisted however i think the laws they do do a good job anybody who's had to manage my also in the last ten years will tell you that the kind of blacklist specially want to let stuff is a good thing it's reduced the amount of spam administrates have to deal with that uses. well there's no but a place on the internet for minimal damage to turn into an epic disaster given how much crucial data is stored on the web and it's all these and told my colleague. cyber attacks are increasingly becoming a very powerful weapon. well certainly cyber attacks are not as lethal let's say as cluster bombs that would not kill people but in our times they're becoming much more effective in terms of damage to the infrastructure and that happens every day

besides if we compare the cost for instance of one missile which would make us like hundreds of thousands of dollars this is cheap and completely untraceable let's take for instance the recent stuxnet virus which was equated by the nato official story use of force which was aimed at disrupting the iranian nuclear program imagine something went wrong there and nuclear facilities started exploding the death toll would have been enormous or the another i'm going cyber attack from a known islamic organization on banks in the united states of course this is not killing people but definitely causing huge financial damage loans are being canceled accounts are being killed so definitely cyber attacks are getting stronger and stronger more dangerous every year they have already been cases of intergovernmental cyber attacks in twenty eleven pentagon was reportedly attacked by other government was a specified which government that was but twenty four thousand sensitive files were stolen and made public only god knows what consequences there were following this attack on the pentagon definitely this is getting boring especially that some of

the frozen conflicts ongoing conflicts in disputes are already being affected by the cyber cybernet warfare in particular the south korean north korean dispute with saul claiming that they suffered thirty two thousand cyber attacks over the course of last year and that north korea masterminding those attacks and even creating a special militarized unit to lead to cyber warfare something which is already happening in the united states according to u.s. officials they are having some kind of regiments of cyber warriors and recently the u.s. defense officials upgraded the threat potential threat from cyber attacks to a higher level than attacks by al qaeda which is something the first happened since nine eleven definitely this speaks volumes as to how serious this whole situation is and how serious the concerns are. and. you can tell us what you think of this internet battle by going to our website and taking part in our on line poll we're asking what you think it could mean well here's how the numbers are looking so far with your responses on the screen we can see the majority forty percent of you

think it's the dawn of a new age of cyber warfare twenty three percent say it will lead to an increase in preemptive government strikes on cyber terrorists almost as many believe it'll eventually see the creation of tougher internet controls to prevent further attacks and we can see that sixteen percent of those of you who are saying it's the end of internet security as we know it go to war to dot com. because you hear from me. or from the internet to mobile networks in the u.s. the f.b.i. is facing a court case over claims it can steal uses info from their own phones and locate exactly where they are. dot com. plus the russian parliament is set to tackle extreme right head on after a new bill put before the duma threatens holocaust denial with jail time and huge fines find out more about that online dot com.

cypriot banks have reopened albeit with a slew of restrictions on what people can do with their money caps and withdrawals monthly limits and any large transfers means for many that cash is still frozen. now reports from nicosia. you can see behind me that is the bank of cyprus there has been a lie that had gathered before the baghdad open but i have to say that the people there have really remained calm and also the fact is there are a lot of media here if you can just pan there's a lot of media here and the people there the crowds have gathered also just to see

what is going on so it's really quite hard to gauge who is actually going to the back and who is not but as far as the live right outside the bank they have been called hoping i'm happy that the bags of finally opened after two weeks and also have to know that a lot of them are older people they say they don't have a.t.m. card so they have to actually go into the back to gather their cash let's just talk about the restrictions that have been imposed those capital controls the first time in the euro zone now the people here can only get three hundred euros per person per day per bank and also if anyone is traveling out of cyprus they can only bring a cash amount of one thousand euros maximum and if they are abroad and they want to charge to their credit cards the maximum limit there is five thousand euros now really for the for many for the past two weeks people have been cash strapped as they try to make the cash in hand to fit and all of this of course we know is it falls under that e.u. i.m.f. plan bailout plan of cyprus agreed agreed upon so this is being imposed in order to get the ten to billion euro deal now as far as the european leaders are concerned

they think that this has saved the country from bankruptcy but the people here many of them really feel that they did not get the best solution that they could get and i've been speaking with a lot of locals and here is my report like many in cyprus. this is simply stunned at the speed and man i wish the banking crisis in his country seems to be spiraling out of control he shows us his wallet no cash only lottery tickets a single parent unemployed and caring for a sick mother in raveling of cyprus's financial woes couldn't have come at a worse time by finishing the pension of my mom all of your life is coming up on you make of plans for the. people who are younger. than these. so. you standing with an empty

hands. a sentiment echoed throughout the tiny island nation. scenes like these becoming a daily occurrence another day in nicosia cyprus another protest though this one in particular is a gathering of the police of the country's largest lender the bank of cyprus but they worry that the company is headed for collapse and they may eventually lose their jobs though many cypriots told me that they are well aware that this is just the beginning of a long hard road i believe that. europe. germany strolled because we're a small economy they felt the consequences would be minimal what they don't know is that the president has been said and what happened today in cyprus could easily happen tomorrow to italy to front june to spain we just want to be left alone to pick up the pieces and get on with our lives to cyprus is part of

your peer european union system files and for. paying the money through the european union who have to stand up the other two contras new members. nobody is that cyprus have a problem or it's because you know economy or something else as economic drama continues with politicians and bankers drawing up painful measures to execute the years old i am a back to the bailout plan it's all too clear to ordinary cypriots who is going to be bearing the brunt need us as mother for example have her monthly pension cut from one thousand one hundred eighty nine year olds to just over one thousand a month ago why they cut from the simple people who have special needs they cut from the people for his part allies the question all cypriots would like answered as well. yes or sylvia r.t. because c.s. cyprus. most of the country's banks have now shut up for the nights with the

workday being shortened to just six hours let's get more perspective on the crisis now and what it may bode for europe as a whole with you hon van overtveldt is editor in chief of the trends magazine. i trust you're there somewhere they are thanks for being with us here on r.t. . just a week ago cyprus is on the brink of bankruptcy at least today the separates have got hold of some of that money so it's not all bad as well armageddon has certainly not happened yet that's for sure but of course what is happening now in cyprus is very bad situation for cyprus the cypriot economy and the cypriot of people and it's also a milestone for the eurozone in its totality because what we have today as a matter of fact is two euros we have the euro locked inside in the euros outside cyprus and due to the controls being put in operation in cyprus these are

now effectively two different currencies now what about other e.u. tax havens also overwhelmingly relying on the banking sector could we see a separate like scenario occurring elsewhere. well what we saw in terms of the decision making with respect to cyprus is that one that one wants to have a banking sector that is at the most three times of g.d.p. in cyprus as we all know it it was and it still is around seven eight eight times g.d.p. now if you look at luxembourg for example that's more than twenty times g.d.p. i mean the banking sector over there a country like malta also as a banking sector that is somewhere between eight to ten times g.d.p. now if we all if we really want the banking sectors in all those countries to go through a ratio of something like three to one in terms of banking sector versus g.d.p.

there's a hell of a job to do in those especially small countries like. let's talk about this tax levy people losing a lot of money because they've been doing the right thing in the past have been penalized for saving their money of course that has really spooked investors throughout the whole of europe could we see this as a president and people say this could happen elsewhere. of course and that is one of the in terms of structural things that changed one of the major things to notice about this bill in cyprus because we've walked away from the bell out scenario to the bill internet and door in there you go first of all to the shareholders of the banks then the bond holders of the bank and then the insured deposit all this and that's totally new it's first tried out and i know here in cyprus and we're all waiting to see what happens when the next crisis comes along and when that time

then the attitude. will be in terms of how they deal with the crisis and whether there will stick to this new strategy of bailing in banks instead of bailing them out through taxpayers' money so when we talk about bailing we're talking just about not just about taking a tax or levy off those deposits but the idea that we're seeing a control a capital control of people's assets in cyprus in effect being held to ransom and it's all it isn't it here's a union founded on the principles of free trade is actually implementing that so when you talk about you talk about not just the tax levy but also the fact that capital can be grabbed by the government such. well we're talking also about the fact indeed that on top of the bill in scenario where as i said you go first to share all those then to bomb to all those and then to the non-insured to posit all this you also have installed now capital control mechanisms which are indeed

totally new in this situation they are contradictory to the very principles of monetary union and when they last only for a few weeks well we'll have to wait and see what happened then if they last longer and really the chances are much larger that there will have to be kept intact over a much longer period than a few weeks then the ballgame changes then we have a new situation and we will have just to wait how markets how bombed all those are deposits all those are we investors react to the fact that one country becomes an isolated country within the euro zone in fact creating as i said earlier two separate euro's. really interesting here thought thank you very much indeed you have done over felt editor in chief of the trends magazine joining us live on how to thank you. in the next hour of the financial guru in mexico as it delves deeper into the cyprus crisis and his findings i have to say agreement to say the least here's a preview for. you start in greece apapa grail storm away from the greek people

plan as moms account is suddenly showed up in switzerland how did that get there who now are saying it with the leadership in cyprus stealing money from people who've seen this story before there's a war going on there's two sides there is the corrupt banking bank stirs and then there's people who are trying to hold on to what they have and i think if i'm not mistaken a bomb went off a couple of days ago in cyprus look for more of those types of things happening because this is a bloody war. because a report coming your way in just over an hour from now here in r.t. more news still to come after a short break stay with us this is r.t. live in moscow.

more news today. again flared up. these are the images the world has been seeing from the streets of canada. operations rule the day.

of her mosco the news continues now more to shells being followed it damascus university getting at least fifteen people and wounding another twenty according to syria's state television the government blames rebels for the attack which comes amid intensified fighting between the army and the opposition around the capital journalist is joining me live now from damascus about up what else do you know about this attack. this attack comes on the. motor that it had been shedding all around syria around damascus city they are. targeting heavily crowded areas in damascus we have one next to the main guard in damascus we have one close to a mosque and we have two. motives in damascus university and this one is the

difficulty of it and it killed fifteen and it was twenty wanted and this massacre it also happened with another one that happened yesterday also with the shelling of . the state news agency and we have also a hospital that was shelled and you have many a situation that was shelled as a kind of a group of shooting of mortars all around damascus in order to make it to spread fear among the citizens of damascus we're seeing increasing violence now in the capital city and also understand more violence in the suburbs itself tell us more about what's happening just outside of the city. outside this it did out we can divide the step of the into two separate areas where it is completely save going on normally and we have one area school down a year where we have a big fighting going on for the last three months now it's heavy heavy heavy and

heavy battles going on we have india that's going on from being calm to being on fire and then getting calm again but the surrounding of the mascot there are a lot of fighting going on every time the rebels seem to be making a lot of ground and it looks like they got to get even more support now following the arab league summit earlier this week. yes of course we have we have this that illusion of the. latest one that allows every state of the arab state to provide weapons to the rebels simply without offending back to that oblique and without making any decision or going back to the need for the resolution from the greek or any other institution and this means that it will get smaller planes from. saudi arabia they used to give weapons but now they have a kind of legitimate cover in order to continue supporting this russia has saved

clearly that that this kind of act is not. should not be continue and it's going to increase the bloodshed of. syria and that's very much a message coming from various countries who are criticizing the fact that the arab league is supporting the rebels not least of course coming from moscow from the foreign minister lavrov his regret at the move saying that military backing to the rebels is both a lawful and encourages more bloodshed this is what he had to say. we believe that the arab league has refused a peaceful settlement for syria the decision that the national coalition is the only legitimate representative of the syrian people of course crosses all the efforts that have been made so far it looks like syria's future is something that's being determined outside syria at the meetings between foreign countries and the external opposition so all the opinion of those who think that the government and internal opposition also carries weight is totally ignored it seems.

of course now we have people we have we should in order to have a solution we should have a solution from inside syria not from outside syria and this everyone in damascus believe that. a full solution if you are depending on outside on do you should you could not find a solution very minute solution because without many of power that interfering in this a dollar thank you very much indeed for that update it was only live there in syria thank you. security services in the u.k. says scores of brits are fighting in syria and could use their weapons know how to cause havoc when they come back home or this is just one part of a wide ranging reporting to keep terrorist threats faced by britain that extend to biological weapons attacks and cyber crime or to. live now in london sara one of the key concerns then raised in this report. well it's the first annual report on

the counterterrorism strategy and in it they highlighted the growing security threat from syria where al qaeda affiliates were tracking hundreds of flights is from europe now let's take a look at some of what the report says and they said as and when u.k. residents for ten there's a risk that they may carry out attacks using skills that they've developed teva sees no these are concerns that only be highlighted by the british government but also being highlighted by other european members as well recently we saw the dutch heighten their security threat level. one hundred four fighters that had gone to syria and these are also the concerns that i think you've been by france as well say assessing not just a problem confronting forfeit but one obviously that we've seen highlighted in this counterterrorism strategy reports and certainly i think a lot of concern amongst the british authorities with seeing these young british

people fighting in the walls what does this tell us about the sort of european and of course british security at the moment that. well look this is the report that was relief this week but this is something that is already happening that there are already fighting there and i think the concern for authorities is that we're going to see these fighters returning home and using the skills that they may have acquired in that situation and now i'm joined by freedom through and journalist monica thank you very much for joining us we were speaking about this subject a couple of weeks before the report was released and obviously this is something that is already going on and i know you've spoken to the. friends of the young british man he was actually the first confirmed british fighter he died for in syria can you tell us a bit about that well here and was what he was only twenty one when he died in syria and already he was a veteran of the libyan libyan war against going to gadhafi. despite his young age

and the despite the fact that he studied in the u.k. he lived in new working on his life is very much. to the friends that i've spoken to is very much a very british in many ways as a london boy despite that i think he found your jihad in syria very attractive and ultimately proven to be proved to be a fatal attraction because he was ultimately killed in homs fish authorities are very concerned the state senate highlighted in this country terrorism report how worried should they be how much of a threat do you think it is to britain well i think that the report said there were probably one hundred fighters i think the real numbers probably are higher. but it depends whether we classify them as british born or simply happen to be living in the u.k. if they simply happen to be live in the u.k. i think the number will be be higher. but i think there are also two levels of threats here there are. arabs who live in the u.k. one lived for a long time of the u.k.

who have gone to syria or libya and forth in those countries i think they would be secondary they would be considered as a secondary threat as far as the secret service are concerned i think what be more . concerning for the british security services are british muslims of asian descent . of the pakistan you're bangladesh or india who might go to places like syria because they're the ones in the past ten years or so who've been involved in the most dangerous terrorist threats in the u.k. and he spoke about abraham having fought in libya beforehand and with seeing people going a bit what is or was they in syria what what what's the appeal what's the low why are these young british men going to fight in a civil war well if you're a practicing strict you know a practicing muslim and you believe the jihad represents one of the pillars of islam and presents a large part of your belief. then syria is a very attractive place to go and fight with me for previous generations perhaps

the war in afghanistan against the soviets was was the want to go to and then the ninety's you had bosnia and chechnya but now you've got syria so every four or five years there is a particular battlefield a particular location where there are tracks you have this from around the world and it just so happens that you know it is serious partly because it's relatively easy to get there but also because there is a lot of historical and religious importance to syria and to damascus especially the place where you know the quote says in the koran where jesus christ is going to come back and there's going to be. armageddon and so on and many of the jihad is to go in front so we actually believe in these things and the believe has a special religious significance ok mary thank you very much for joining us on a describe that i don't think anyone could have had any idea of just how complex and how the implications of what is happening in syria right now being we have the

u.n. envoy to syria speaking today they desperately need for all five to come together once again trying to find a resolution to the conflict so if a live in london thank you very much indeed for that. well time now for the business news here on r t katie's with us here in the studio and katie such a person of course is the way to the business agenda indeed so you're welcome to talk about right now going to give you market analysis also the risk of contagion will be on the lies and what it means for the the euro zone's reputation that's all coming up after the break the business about us and l. ok thanks a lot casey. plans to create a war medal for cyber warfare have been part of hold by new defense secretary chuck hagel but should they have been put on hold i mean hackers or drone operators do play a real important.