Analysis

       In our previous post we saw that over time we have had a steady increase of in the occurrence of cybercrime. The impact of these attacks has costs companies worldwide an estimated 1 trillion dollars (US) in damages. On the other side this epidemic has spawned new departments in government devoted to security, new companies who produce counter measures for cybercrime, and an army of specialist to develop and practice strategies to help protect companies and government. There are now whole fields of study that utilize what we have learned from the hacking community. In actuality the “hackers” are the front line for detecting vulnerabilities in software and proprietary hardware. Although it is commonly believed that some vulnerability are not made public until they have enjoyed them for some time. Good security professionals make it their business to attend at least 1 major hacker convention a year, to stay abreast of the latest techniques and targets of the hacker community. The hacker culture has always been one of experimentation to test the boundaries of the technologies they had access to. William H. Gates III in his youth was a “hacker”. But as the possibility for profit and less need for actual skill to be a “hacker” (Script Kiddies) became more popular, cybercrime inevitably exploded. Now in our present day security professionals have a virtual war to fight with two fronts. They have to defend against criminals who would extort and steal from companies and they have to defend against enemy governments who would attack another countries infrastructure. Take for example the video below from a sixty minutes episode on cyberterrorism. In it Steve Kroft describes a possible attack on Brazil in 2007 which brought down their power grid and had a few cities without power for 2 days. There is also mention of an attack on the US defense department where several terabytes of data was stolen and even our most “secure” computer system SATCOM was hacked by a foreign country in 2007. The video below summarizes the dangers faced by cyberattack and how unprepared we currently are.

Judging from this report it seems that our infrastructure which is for the most part under the control of private companies are targets for foreign countries. Private companies are driven by profit and if setting up proper protections will affect profitability it is less likely to be done. Although these potential targets are under the control of private companies their vulnerability pose a threat to national security. The diverging interests of the two entities seem to have put them into conflict over security. The power industry was recently caught lying to congress about steps taken to secure the power grid. 

 

Kroft, Steven (2009, November) Sabotaging the System. CBSNEWS.com

Retrieved on April 23,2010  http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/11/06/60minutes/main5555565.shtml