The little guy fights back. In a world where the focus is on state sponsored hackers, there are still stories out there that salute the little guy. And that is good and bad.
One story has emerged of a security researcher in the US, who was doing some work on the size and shape of the North Korean cyber threat and North Korean hackers started hacking him to see what he knew and what he had found out.
So he brought down the entire country’s internet.
As with any infrastructure IT, it is a mish-mash of old and new and the little guy in the US was skilled enough to exploit the weaknesses, launch a massive DDoS attack and bring down the country’s albeit not leading edge internet.
It can, of course, go wrong when it comes to the little guy pitting himself against a country. Several years ago a teenager was sentenced to serious jail time for hacking into the Pentagon.
Why did he do it? Because, well, it was there.
Now the digital world has become so important that it is beginning to be policed like the real one. We have already said that policing environments like metaverses is going to be a tough and complex call but one group got into serious trouble in Minecraft.
A teenager and his friends threatened to blow up a fake building in the fake environment, Minecraft. He got five years, his friends got away with warnings because they co-operated. The crime: ‘training for terrorist activities.’
It was a fake building, just to be clear.
The little guy should never be underestimated for his (or her) skill and agility. The problem is the target will almost always have more teeth.
The next few years are going to be an interesting time for security issues in the digital world. As innovation and automation kick in, weaknesses will appear as the speed of development stretches technology and resources.
One example is in a new report that highlights exactly this problem. The different expansion techniques when it comes to mobile networks create a real issue. New services can now been launched with a few mouse clicks, the network is becoming sophisticated enough to expand automatically but the poor security guys still have to check and test and recheck the security of both – manually.
The little guy may steal a few headlines and be a hero or a villain but the day to day challenges for the rest of the community should not be underestimated – now or ever.
Related article:
Be the first to comment