This is the most frightening book I’ve ever read.
I have spent four days totally engrossed in its 528 pages.
The title is This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends: The Cyberweapons Arms Race.
That’s not an exaggeration. Every bad actor from Russia to North Korea, from China to the United States (yes, us, too) now has the skills and tools to destroy their enemy with cyber tools.
They all can turn off distant lights, shut down banks and ATM machines, stop railways and airlines, blow up nuclear power plants, open dams to flood hundreds of thousands of people, stop oil pipelines flowing, etc.
Everything today is connected through the Internet. More and more things are being connected every day.
While this brings more productivity, it also brings us more vulnerability. If you know your way around the Internet, you can get to and inside anything and everything.
The power to hack distant devices and mess with them is now universal.
This is a new form of mutually assured destruction (MAD). We have treaties that have protected us from dropping atom bombs on our enemies or them dropping bombs on us. But we don’t have treaties stopping this. And this is much worse.
In one way, this is better. In the old days, the state had to fund and research new bombs. That was expensive and only available to the richest countries. These days ransomware pays.
The deal in a place like Russia — You’re allowed to hack anyone outside Mother Russia and make whatever monies you want, we won’t touch you. And we won’t give you to the Americans. But, when we need you, you’re ours. You’ll do exactly what we tell you to do. No matter how awful.
The book is “the big picture.” It does not talk about what you and I and our companies should do to protect ourselves from ransomware.
Here are the usual tips:
+ Don’t open ANY email attachments without calling the sender and asking “If it is OK?” Email-attached PowerPoints and Excel spreadsheets can infect your computer.
+ Change your passwords every three months. Don’t use the same password. Your old passwords are already on the Dark Web for all to see. The book has an example,
+ Use two factor authentication as much as you can. Especially with banks and online brokers.
+ Keep backups “air gapped” — on discs and flash drives away the Internet. Back up at least twice a day.
+ Don’t trust the cloud as your backup. It’s also on the Internet.
+ Buy ransomware insurance for your company.
+ Keep a second or third laptop ready and prepared to switch your working files (from your air gapped backup) over and get back to work. If it’s infected you may have to wipe your original laptop. Or throw it out..
+ Don’t trust your bank. If someone steals your money, it’s your fault, not your bank’s. I remember my bank telling that once my money left their bank, it was my duty to chase it. I don’t make this up. And that applies even if it’s a 1000% their fault. Which it was.
I’ll see you tomorrow. I’m in Portland, Oregon visiting the grandkids. Which is a lot more fun that writing and reading about cyberwarfare, hacking and ransomware.
— Harry Newton
