The recent worldwide ransomware attack again
demonstrates the risk posed to modern life
from cyber insecurity. Some general comments:
- It is still scary that some industry
and government leaders don’t seem to realize
how seriously the threat is. (I can provide
specific examples to interested readers.) - Clever hackers operating in their basement
are enough of a threat, but now we also have to
deal with threats from military cyberattack units,
Some recent threats seem to be coming from the
North Korean military. - Investigation into Russian interference is
continuing, but one fact that has been established
is that Russian intelligence did break into the
email account of a high campaign official last year
using a phishing attack. - It may seem that it would be convenient to
have all your household devices connected to the
internet so they could be controlled remotely,
but until the security problem is solved the
idea of the “internet of things” is extremely
risky. - The latest vulnerability that lead to the
recent ransomware attack seems to have been a coding
error. Everybody makes mistakes, but the effort
you put into double-checking things needs to be
commensurate with the level of damage that a mistake
might cause.
Recommended reading:
this post from Michael Covington’s daily notebook
See also this post from March 2016
……………..
–Douglas Downing
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