Dubai: The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) has identified the people behind the recent high-tech malwares targeting many countries across the world and has spoken to them, Dr Hamadoun L. Toure, secretary general, International Telecommunication Union, told Gulf News in an exclusive interview.

“Most of the attacks have been around the world, not only in the Middle East. Most of the origin and destination of attacks are primarily targeted at two countries — US and China,” he said.

At the same time, he said the largest number of attacks are coming from these countries also.

ITU is promoting an idea of cyber space treaty. “I have created the cyber cities agenda since my election in 2006 ,” he said. Cyber warfare will be much “worse than cyber tsunami”.

He added that the only way to win a war is to avoid it in the first place. “Today an individual can accelerate a war and can initiate an attack, but a wrong country will be counter attacked. There is no clear winner, all you leave is destruction,” said Toure.

“I don’t expect a treaty to be signed in the near future. We are far from it but at the same time I am working on it,” he said.

Toure hopes that the world will not see big cyber attacks in future.

Praising the Middle East’s tremendous growth in ICT Sector, especially the UAE, Toure said: “The challenge we face in this region is how to make good use of ICT sector growth for job creation. In the Arab world, there are countries highly advanced and there are countries lagging behind. We need to bring them up.”

He added that ICT can be a tool to help create jobs and two-thirds of the jobs have been created in this field and still have more potential.

As a result, “we have identified potential investment worth $300 billion in the Arab states. These will create massive job opportunities in the region,” said Toure.

Further, he said that broadband needs to be affordable to common man. The rates in the Middle East are high compared to other European rates, according to Toure.

“We have held a high-level meeting recently in Geneva with key stakeholders to bring up the patent issue. We believe that the number of patent cases in court rooms could hamper innovation. We need to bring all stakeholders and put it on the table and discuss the issue and find a solution,” he said, adding, that the issue needs finetunig. “ITU is not a tribunal and will no longer be. Solutions need to come from the players, we don’t invent solutions at Geneva,” he said.