Cyberattacks are an increasingly serious threat | News, Sports, Jobs

“A flawed update to an unknown security software disabled security systems around the world on Friday, causing widespread disruptions to travel, healthcare and businesses of all kinds while revealing in stunning detail the fragility of a global economy built on shared technology.”

This first sentence from the Washington Post article sums up the danger we face from potential and actual enemies. If an unintentional software glitch can cause such devastation, how much more harm, danger, and destruction could totalitarian states like Iran, North Korea, Russia, and China inflict if they chose to do so?

Most flights were grounded due to a software glitch. Operations were delayed. ATMs and other services were disrupted. Normality seemed to be restored fairly quickly (apart from Delta Airlines, which is still having issues for days after the incident), but this should have been a sign and warning of potentially worse things to come if we are not prepared. It was supposedly an accident. But what if this or worse was intentional?

Cyberattacks from space are a potential threat as China and Russia ramp up their space programs. They are not coming “in peace for all humanity” as it says on the plaque left on the moon 50 years ago by Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin.

Three months ago, FBI Director Christopher Wray called this a threat “extremely serious” but also claims to have had many successes in combating, especially cyber threats related to the Chinese military. Speaking at the FBI and University of Kansas Cyber ​​​​Security Conference in April, Director Wray added that the threat from cyber hackers is “complex, persistent and serious. … They are more

“widespread, affecting a wider range of victims, and having the potential to do greater harm than ever before.”

According to Forbes magazine “…spending to combat cybercrime damage is expected to grow by 15 percent annually over the next two years, reaching $10.5 trillion annually by 2025.” Computer giant IBM announces that “The United States will continue to face the highest data breach costs in 2023, at $5.09 million.”

The government’s answer to everything seems to be to spend more, but perhaps other ways might be more effective. What may not be for the person whose worst subject at school was math, but greater minds may have an answer and will hopefully come up with one or more very quickly.

The Center for Security and International Studies (CSIS) has developed a timeline that covers what it calls “significant cyber incidents since 2006 (focusing on) cyberattacks on government agencies, defense and high-tech companies, or economic crimes with losses exceeding one million dollars.” In the last two years alone, there have been dozens of them around the world.

During the Cold War, America’s defense capabilities were measured in visible ICBMs. Cyberattacks are largely invisible and far more sophisticated until the damage they cause is too late to reverse.

I’m writing this column in a text app because my Microsoft Word has been wiped out—temporarily, I hope. A minor issue, but the personal impact of the CrowdStrike problem.

During the Cold War, the decision-makers who could order a nuclear strike were supposedly few in number. Not so with cyberattackers, who could be agents of a hostile state or kids locked in a bedroom with a laptop.

The last script was the plot of the 1983 film titled “War Games” in which a young man finds a backdoor into a military central computer. Reality intertwines with a video game, threatening World War III.

Forty-one years later, that fiction has become all too real. Hackers—whether from the government or the basement—will not come in peace for all of humanity. We have been warned.

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