Pakistan to open cyber warfare school

ISLAMABAD - Pakistan's military will create a cyber warfare school to help combat growing Internet attacks from India, Israel an official said on Wednesday.

The army has teamed up with NUST School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science to open in 2012 the new cyber-defence school, which will admit 30 students a year for a four-year course.

Courses include how to break malicious Internet codes, ways to psychologically prepare for cyber warfare and other IT technologies to guard against potential attacks, an army spokesman told NUST. 

'We... seek to nurture warriors to fight in cyber warfare amid growing cyber-terror threats from India, Israel and to secure a stable supply of specialists,' the army said in a statement. The military will pay tuition for the students who upon graduation will become army officers required to work in online warfare-related units for the following seven years, the spokesman said.


India's defence ministry denied the allegation and called it 'absurd'. Islamabad also accused Israel of staging cyber-attacks on websites of major Pakistani government agencies and financial institutions in March this year and in July 2010. Israel also rejected those allegations, accusing Islamabad of inventing the charges to raise tensions.