The ongoing massive cyber hacking for ransom that at the time of this writing has reportedly affected 150 countries and at least 200,000 institutions was a disaster waiting to happen.
The July 2009 North Korean cyber-attacks on the United States and South Korea’s government and major business and public organizations in the form of denial of service, signaled that it was only a question of time before digital weapons are used as Weapon of Mass Effect (WME). It did not take long before service denial attacks escalated into cyber espionage, stealing data from government, public and private entities and academic institutions, causing untold economic damage. The weaponization of cyber soon followed; recall the Stuxnet, the first publicly known digital weapon that was said to cause physical damage to Iran uranium enrichment plant in Natanz, in 2010.
On July 9, 2012, former CIA and NSA director, Gen. Michael Hayden, speaking at the American Center for Democracy’s Economic Warfare Institute’s briefing on Capitol Hill, on Economic Warfare Subversions: Anticipating the Threats, said he was worried that it would not take long for “Hackers to acquire the skills and the tools we currently associate with nation states.”
As we have since seen, Gen. Hayden was right to worry. While not widely publicized, the scope of cyber-attacks by seemingly loosely affiliated hacking groups and the information they sell on the dark web has grown exponentially. Just one year later, two major attacks on the Internet hinted what to expect if/when our economic and financial infrastructures are hit by different attacks at once. Cyberbunker – not a Chinese – but a Dutch web hosting company generated the largest global distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack on the spam filtering company, Spamhouse. When that attack came to light, in 2013, this author has warned: “This new economic warfare presents a nascent threat in complex areas that challenge analysis and identification. While at first our streets will not be littered with bodies as with a nuclear attack, a stealth attack on our economic, financial and communication channels, could in short time destroy the U.S. economy and devastate its people. Perhaps it’s time to rethink our mostly digital dependent economy.”
Criminals, terrorists and rough nations operate under cover of the Dark Web, which masks their identities. It is too early to say who the alleged ‘hacking collective’ known as the ‘Shadow Brokers’ is affiliated with. This is the group that is said to have released the ransom malware that paralyzed hospitals in Britain, telecommunication and gas companies in Spain, and other government and public institutions in all over the world. The unprecedented global attack would yield at least $60 million to the hackers (200,000 victims paying $300 in ransom), though cyber experts claim only some $70K in Bitcoin were paid. Judging by previous reactions from cyber experts immediately after a major attack, I doubt this is accurate.Even if the ‘Shadow Brokers’ are not affiliated with Iran North Korea, China, Russia, al Qaeda, ISIS and their ilk, it is reasonable to assume the stolen data in their possession would generate much higher revenues. Upgrading computers and network security may safeguard new information, but not the valuable information that has been stolen.
Even if the ‘Shadow Brokers’ are not affiliated with Iran North Korea, China, Russia, al Qaeda, ISIS and their ilk, it is reasonable to assume the stolen data in their possession would generate much higher revenues. Upgrading computers and network security may safeguard new information, but not the valuable information that has been stolen.
