Countries in Eastern Europe and Africa that harbour cyber criminals should be locked out of the global internet until their governments do something to reduce the threats, the former chief technology officer at the US National Security Agency says.

The Australian ISP industry is already one of the first in the world to develop an industry code that would see some infected Australian users effectively unable to access the open internet until they clean their computer of malware. This is due to formally come into effect on December 1.

While applauding this idea, Dr Prescott Winter, who left the NSA in February after a 27-year career there, including as its CTO, said governments and internet providers around the world could go a step further and target the source of many of the threats..

Security companies regularly finger countries in Eastern Europe and Africa as being havens for cyber criminals and spawning much of the internet security threats affecting internet users worldwide. Even global superpowers like China have been accused of sponsoring hackers to attack Western internet companies including Google.

Winter said that when countries are consistently introducing cyber threats the global community should band together to effectively shut them out of the internet until their governments do something about it.