Cyber Security
Cyber threat refers to a person who attempts to gain access into a computer system or information without proper authorisation by the use of a data communication pathway. Cyber threats are no unknown devil in the 21st century, private information being shared and leaked around the world is now normal, armies of countries and companies at large are being compromised as confidential data of armies are being shared with other countries and militant organisations followed by companies loosing confidential strategies and market plans, in other words big data is being shared continuously.
Steve Herrod, the Managing director, General catalyst and Ex-CTO of VMware also shared conceptual detail as to how hackers were getting more and more personalized when they target specific individuals in an attempt to access intricate information. An average cyber hacking organizations earns half a dollar in a time difference of every twenty-four hours over every controlled technological device. Big organizations like Google, Amazon and American defenses make million dollar investments into cyber security to prevent the outrageous number of attacks faced by them everyday.
Cyber threats can be classified into various categories such as those of –bot-network operators, foreign intelligence services, ransomwares, spear phishing, insiders, phishers, hacking elections, spywares, and terrorists –each of the following use different methods/techniques and target to gain data in a rather unauthorized manner with an intention to cause harm.
Ransomware in the cloud is a technique used by these attackers that target big organizations such as those of Britain’s National Health Service, San Francisco’s light rail network, and FedEx. Ransomware is a malware which breaches all computer defenses and locks down computer files using strong encryption, Hackers then demand money in exchange for the digital key to unlock their own data, attackers tend to attack victims whose encrypted data has not been backed up as this ensure the vulnerability of the company and ensures them a paycheck.
Spear phishing is another method used by attackers that uses artificial intelligence to articulate messages in an attempt to trick people to install malware or share their sensitive data. Both sides of the operation are using machine learning in an attempt to recognize and block a potential virus where as the hackers use it to gain permission from the users themselves using fake messages.
Cyber attacks have also been used in having rigged elections by attacking the voting booth process itself. As per research Russian organizations are said to have hacked/rigged the 2016 general presidential elections in the United States of America in multiple different American states. Hackers also tend to gain power to influence vulnerable general public into believing a certain party assuperior and coax them to deliver the vote in their favor.
Cyber-physical attacks are hazardous attacks that affect the general public on a large scale, hackers in this method of attack gains access into electrical grids, transportation systems and other infrastructures that are critical to a countries work flow. Future disruptions may lead to attackers hampering aircrafts, ships, and tanks taking control of these big machines causing disruptions on their fingertips.
Cyber is increasingly become a dangerous place to live in due to the increasing number of funds being invested into it on a daily basis. High security firms are being forced to spend millions of dollars to prevent any breach. Start-ups that are incapable of repelling these cyber attacks are falling prey to these bugs.
Sources:
MIT Technology Review: Six Cyber Threats to Really Worry About in 2018. (2nd January 2018). Retrieved from- https://www.technologyreview.com/s/609641/six-cyber-threats-to-really-worry-about-in-2018/
What is Cyber security? (22nd December 2017). Retrieved from- https://www.paloaltonetworks.com/cyberpedia/what-is-cyber-security
3 comments on “Cyber Security”
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Hi! first I want to thank you for the topic and the key-points you are highlighting. I really like went you talk about Cyber-physical attacks, were its success is devastating for a country. I believe that our society needs to be educated about this topic more than it is right now. I hope that as a society we are going to be able to to protect not only our home, identity or countries but protecting us a single community, as a single race, the Human race.
We see people talking about cyber evolution and technologies innovations all the time but it is rare to see discussions about their negative consequences to the society. We talked about large impacts, but our law system haven’t followed the changes in the society even for small cases. This can lead in to serious problems like digital crimes that are really hard to track and the constitution does not mention much about them. The numbers of digital attacks to teenagers, for example, gets bigger everyday. The cyber evolution has good and bad consequences, but I fell that we spend much more time just talking about the good ones and ignoring that we still have to improve a lot.
The level of sophistication in cyber attacks is insane – all the different ways you mentioned above are proof of this – and it’s only going to get more sophisticated as more people and devices get connected in more ways. The rise of IoT and wearables for example will have a huge impact on the types of data being captured as well – and like you said, will lead to more innovative cyber attacks like cyber-physical attacks that will have very real consequences. I think cyber security is one of those things that you don’t really care about/understand until you experience it first hand – until you get hacked and see the consequences of that hack for yourself, it’ll be hard for the normal every-day person to recognize and prioritize it’s importance. But hopefully companies and government agencies can find better ways to stress the importance of cyber security before hacks become the norm and we lose all control over our data.