Hacker World: Cyber Security in the 21st Century

Welcome to the next installment of my “What the Hell is Going On?” collection drawn from my first book and various new essays that I have been sitting on and am now ready to publish. You can read the whole collection.

In 2010, I ran a small underground media company called Picklehelm Productions. We were young and edgy. We had a simple website that featured our logo, bands on our record label, and several other parts of our business. I never thought a website like ours would be a target for hacking. However, in late 2010, an extremist Muslim group hacked our website and replaced all our pages with a message that we needed to convert to Islam and forsake our sinful ways to get our website back. We spoke with our hosting company, and they undid the hack, and we paid for better security. I didn’t know much about cyber security back then, but as it turns out, this kind of thing would be a precursor for the future. Information has become as vital as clean air and water in modern civilization. Keeping data secure is something that affects everyone.

Cyber Security and You

Most people associate cybersecurity with things like identity theft. Identity theft is a very real threat that faces millions of Americans each year. Trying to undo identity theft is incredibly difficult. Information is stolen, bought, and sold like a commodity on the dark web. This is where most people experience Cyber Security. However, data security affects our lives much more than our own.

Cyber security, or the lack thereof, threatens our everyday lives. In our modern world, almost everything is controlled or somehow connected to computers and networks that allow modern civilization to operate with much less people-power than in the past. There are the apparent systems like electricity, water, sanitation, and other essentials, but this also extends to the logistics of making sure food arrives on grocery store shelves. Financial services are also profoundly affected by these systems, and a collapse of the banking system could also grind the world to a halt.

Cybersecurity has entered the world of stories as well. Sam Esmail’s popular show, “Mr. Robot,” demonstrated how delicate our financial systems are and how a tenacious group of hackers can bring the world to a standstill. In the show, the hacker collective F Society erases all the debt held by the world’s banks. They have an elaborate scheme to accomplish this involving software, hardware, and clandestine operations. But that is only part of the story. The other part of the story is how they destroy society. No one knows who owns or has what money without records of debts. Soon, businesses close, people lose their houses, and mayhem ensues. Obviously, this is a fictional TV show. Still, the reality is that our society rests on this tenuous foundation of technology, and one false move could set the world back by decades, even centuries.

Cyber Security is a highly technical and complicated field. Cybersecurity has to do with the fact that cybersecurity happens in the technical background pieces that keep the internet and the information it carries moving around the globe. Because these systems are so complex and no one knows everything about them, mistakes, loopholes, and security vulnerabilities are made intentionally or accidentally. As anyone will tell you, security is only as strong as the humans using it.

In many cases that I will get to later on, we will see major problems that can occur when one particular system (an oil pipeline, for example) is hacked and can no longer function. This is where cybersecurity matters to the public. It goes beyond just keeping our phones and computers safe; it is the computers we interact with at our jobs and the systems we rely on to provide our goods and services to live. Without these vital systems, civilization, at least as we know it, could collapse. That is where a show like Mr. Robot is helpful because we can see the effects of getting Cyber Security wrong.

What is Cyber Security?

Preventing the misuse of computers and the networks that join them together is something that society has faced since the late 1970s. The first laws criminalizing computer crimes were passed in the mid-1980s, beginning with the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of 1986. All US states have similar laws that make using computers to commit crimes, like larceny, a felony. Despite this, very few hackers have been prosecuted using these laws. Those who commit crimes on the internet are notoriously difficult to find.

Cybercrimes are cheap, relatively easy to accomplish, and are difficult to track or arrest the hackers. This makes cyber a new battlefield and an attractive option for state actors and terrorist groups with laptops and some intelligent people. Cybercrime can take many forms.

Several types of cyber-attacks include Malware, Ransomware, Social engineering, Phishing, Spear Phishing, DDoS, Insiders, Advanced persistent threats, and Smart devices. These attacks range from taking over computers with malicious software (malware) or making computers inaccessible due to encrypted data, the key to which must be paid to the criminals (ransomware). These crimes include stealing login data to get into the system (phishing), simply overwhelming a server with requests so it can no longer function (DDoS), or merely hacking devices and making them behave in ways people don’t expect.

Cyber security and cybercrimes have become significant problems, and we are only now beginning to understand the more critical effects and the expense. According to IBM, “The volume of cybersecurity incidents is on the rise across the globe, but misconceptions continue to persist…Cybercriminals are outsiders. Cybersecurity breaches are often the result of malicious insiders working for themselves or in concert with outside hackers. These insiders can be a part of well-organized groups backed by nation-states. The risk surface is still expanding, with thousands of new vulnerabilities reported in old and new applications and devices. And opportunities for human error — specifically by negligent employees or contractors who unintentionally cause a data breach — keep increasing. Cybercriminals always find new attack vectors — including Linux systems, operational technology (OT), Internet of Things (IoT) devices, and cloud environments. Every industry has its share of cybersecurity risks, with cyber adversaries exploiting the necessities of communication networks within almost every government and private sector organization. For example, ransomware attacks (see below) are targeting more sectors than ever, including local governments and non-profits, and threats on supply chains, “.gov” websites, and critical infrastructure have also increased.”

How Did the Cyber Battlefield Start?

One of the first actual Cyber warfare attacks was started by the National Security Agency (US) in some malware they used to attack the Iranian Nuclear Program. The mission was called the “Olympic Games,” the operation started under the Bush administration and was only to be continued under Obama at the urging of the outgoing Bush administration. President Bush personally told President-Elect Obama about the operation. The software was made to cause the centrifuges they used to enrich uranium to spin faster and destroy themselves without the operators realizing that anything had gone wrong. The virus got into the Natanz nuclear facility in Iran through a scientist who carried it in his computer, which he had used at home. The facility was not connected to the internet, so a human carrier was needed to “sneakernet” the virus into the facility. Eventually, this virus escaped and went around the world, earning the name “Stuxnet.”

This opened the door to Cyberwarfare. Little did anyone know then, but this would be the first attack of its kind and begin a new type of war and a new kind of arms race between all international players. Before this, Cybercrime was used for theft and spying but never before as an offensive weapon. In 2012, the US government started taking cybersecurity more seriously. It was obvious that there would be small attacks over time rather than one large attack. This new strategy would soon be evident.

The earliest Cyber-attacks, after the US digital invasion of the Iran nuclear program, were swift and painful. The first attack at the Sands Casino Group, owned by Sheldon Adelson, was a primary victim. Iran did not take the attack on their nuclear program lying down. In 2013, they attacked the Sands Casino group attack because of comments Adelson, a major GOP donor, made about Iran destroying their computers and causing $40 million in damages as well as irreparably damage to the brand. In the fall of 2023, another similar attack took place against the MGM Casino group, causing untold amounts of damage and leaving them unable to pay out players or even pay their employees. The MGM attack barely made the news.

Phishing scams have been around as long as email and the internet. Many people accidentally gave away their login information to websites they thought were legit but were fronts for crime. In the 2016 US presidential election, Jim Podesta, Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager, fell victim to one such scam from alleged Russian hackers. They used his email credentials to steal and release private campaign emails between Jim Podesta and the Clinton campaign. The Podesta email hack was lost in the hubbub around the infamous Access Hollywood tape where Trump was caught on a hot-mic admitting that he likes to grab women in their genital region and kiss them without their express and enthusiastic consent. A similar situation happened with Mrs. Clinton’s long-time associate, Huma Abedin, which resulted in yet another sex scandal for her lover, Anthony Weiner.

After the Sands Casino attack, the next target was Sony Entertainment. This attack was perpetrated by North Korea using a Chinese proxy. The hacker group was in the Sony network for months. They didn’t even hide their presence very well. They felt emboldened. However, the fallout was devastating once the attack was discovered. They decided to release several private emails of Sony executives. This shook Hollywood as the secrets of significant stars splashed across the internet, and the private opinions of Sony executives about those stars were fodder for gossip sites. This attack coincided with a new film called The Interview, set to satirize the North Korean regime and poke fun at the Great Leader. Starring Seth Rogan and James Franco, the demands of North Korea scared away concertgoers, while for others, it became a badge of bravery and honor to go anyway. Indeed, the attack probably gave the film more attention than it would have otherwise achieved.

The reality is that there are vulnerabilities everywhere. For now, the attacks haven’t disrupted American life. The Colonial Pipeline incident was the first attack that showed how critical infrastructure could be attacked with nothing more than a laptop and internet connection. Shutting off the biggest East Coast pipeline and leaving gas stations without gas was a preview of what was possible and how vulnerable we are to this new threat.

After the Sony Pictures hack, cyber attacks began to pile up. In 2016, the phishing scam that caught John Podesta revealed the private emails between Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager and her entire staff.

The security of elections is vital to a fair and open democracy. Companies keep voting machines off the internet because that is the only way to save them entirely secure. However, the security of elections has become a major national issue thanks to Donald Trump and: The Big Lie” that the 2020 election was stolen. Fox News repeated it so often and without proof that they had to settle out of court with Dominion Voting Systems for 730 million dollars.

The efforts of companies like Cambridge Analytica and Russian intelligence assets to affect elections have only contributed to a distrust of data elections and have highlighted the need for better cyber security.

In 2017, The Not Petya attack shut down operations at Maersk, the world’s biggest container ship company, and FedEx, America’s leading package delivery service. This attack used code that originated in the NSA. America’s perfect weapon, as described by people in the documentary The Shadow Hackers, was out in the public. The “Wanna cry” attack followed this up.

This attack targeted computers that ran the Windows operating system, and it was so pervasive that it attacked 100 countries in one day, including the aging Baltimore City Council computer system. It cost $15 million to fix, and one council member pointed out that it would have simply been cheaper to pay off the hackers.

All of this was happening in the lead-up to the 2018 Midterm elections, and that left folks in both parties wondering how safe election systems were going into the election. The mid-terms happened without much fanfare. The Democrats took back the House of Representatives, ending two years of GOP control of government.

Much of this was due to several changes the Trump administration had taken. Regarding other cyber security, the US is good at offense but not defense. Even President Trump admitted, “…the cyber, oh the cyber is very important.” To this end, Trump delegated cyber authority to the Department of Defense and empowered Cyber command to take on missions and security at their discretion with constant Presidential approval. This was the cyber equivalent of putting the command of nuclear weapons to commanders in the field. A few things began in earnest. The first was realizing that Russia was in the American electric grid, and the US Cyber Command responded by making its presence known in Russia’s grid. The Cyber command took on Russia and the infamous Internet Research Agency, which had done so much work during the 2016 election to elect Donald Trump.

The next source of problems in cyber security and digital manipulation would not come from Russia but China due to the start of the Coronavirus pandemic. However, Russia didn’t hang back. Russia used pandemic misinformation in Ukraine about folks coming from China to reinforce the narrative that Chinese people were spreading Coronavirus. This led to violence towards Chinese people in Ukraine in the early days of the pandemic. Ukraine is Russia’s favorite spot to try out cyber security hacks and public information manipulation. This has only ramped up since they invaded the country. Everything Russia did in 2016 was first tested in Ukraine.

China used disinformation to throw off blame for Covid-19. They kept the mysterious origins of the virus a secret until the lab leak theory became so accepted that it became a joke. China silenced doctors and spread disinformation to cover up for the tremendous amount of damage the COVID-19 virus had done to the entire world. China has also faced scrutiny over its telecommunications company, Huawei, and its build-out of 5G networks. Viewed as an opening for Chinese spying, the US doesn’t allow Huawei products on American networks, and the UK had to cancel contracts in 2019 due to its alliance with the United States. Amid all of this, The US had another Presidential election.

The 2020 election was always going to be contentious. People wondered what Russia would do this time. Candidate Joe Biden said, “I know Putin, and he knows me, and he doesn’t want me to be president.” The suspicions around Russia’s actions in the 2020 election would lead to a phenomenon now known in some circles as “The Big Lie.” Purported by Donald Trump, Tucker Carlson, and many other Republicans, they claimed that the 2020 election was stolen despite no evidence that anything had been stolen and Trump’s vote counters being paid to go around the country to re-count votes and only finding more votes for Joe Biden. This was particularly true in Maricopa County (Arizona), where they kept finding more votes for Joe Biden. Between the 2016 and 2020 elections, the trust in American elections has been eroded. Tucker Carlson was fired from Fox News after Dominion Voting Systems won a $705 million settlement from the networking for destroying its reputation. Trump has been banned from almost all mainstream social networks and faces charges in Georgia for trying to talk the Secretary of State into faking vote counts to let him win Georgia’s electoral votes. Several people in Michigan were sent to jail for trying to put forth a fake panel of electors for the Electoral College. Indeed, in the 2020 election, no hacking was needed.

If an election was hacked, it could lead to disastrous consequences. Hackers are sort of like modern-day pirates. Instead of ships, they use laptops, but the idea is the same. Go after a juicy target and steal the cargo, which is data. Modern pirates will often seize a ship and demand payment from the insurance company. Hackers may begin using this very business model.

The question now is how we defend against these attacks. How can we secure America’s various electronic systems as society increasingly relies on computers for even the most basic functions?

Defense Against Digital Arts

Regarding solving the cybersecurity problem, I am a bit disappointed in what I’ve heard from experts. In 2022, I hosted four experts on The Cameron Journal Podcast as part of this essay’s research; when I asked them how to defend against these attacks, their answers were not encouraging. The advice was typical: have good security practices and update your virus software. I was looking for the missile defense of cyber security, and it seems like those conversations are nascent at this stage. However, we are facing a labor shortage in the field.

There is a labor shortage in cybersecurity, and YouTube channels are about how to get into the field and start a career. This progress is good, but the US could be doing more. The reality is that the government and private companies should actively recruit existing university professionals and students for these roles. Much like military recruitment, the government needs to begin specifically approaching young people to take on these roles. This is an area where the US is behind. The Chinese and the Russians both actively recruit for Cyber, and the US needs to be doing the same.

Cyber is the war of the 21st century. In an age where knowledge, information, and data are as valuable as gold and silver, who controls information and how it flows can bring powerful nations to their knees. Cyber warfare, both offensive and defensive, is essential to the national security of the United States. Fortunately, there have been some improvements in this area.

The Expense

Cybersecurity is expensive, too. The average data breach cost was USD 3.86 million globally and USD 8.64 million in the United States. These costs include discovering and responding to the violation, the cost of downtime and lost revenue, and the long-term reputational damage to a business and its brand. IBM calculates that cybersecurity will be worth 320 billion dollars by 2026 and will cost 10.5 trillion globally annually by 2025.

These costs are already hitting home. The Colonial pipeline payout was large enough even to bother an oil company. When the City of Baltimore had a ransomware attack, they followed the federal government’s advice by ditching all their computers and rebuilding city databases from scratch. Still, the reality is that the cost of doing that was more than simply paying the hackers for the keys to undo the hack.

On the one hand, the federal government doesn’t want to negotiate with these people or get into the habit of paying them. The theory goes that this would only encourage criminals and other nefarious actors to keep doing this for an easy payout. However, when the expense of recreating digital systems is more excellent than simply paying the pirate, isn’t it more accessible to give Blackbeard the gold and go on with your life? Much like the piracy of the 16th and 17th centuries, companies and institutions face this dilemma today.

Government’s Role

President Biden has tasked all government agencies, like the National Institute of Standards and Technology, to protect the federal government from cyber attacks and help private companies protect their systems.

President Trump made significant moves on what he called “the cyber.” He liberated the military agencies responsible for cyber-attacks and defense and let me operate without express presidential approval for every mission. Cyber Security was something that even Trump took seriously. It was one of the talking points he seemed to have a grasp on and would speak about consistently.

Hardening private sector infrastructure is another aspect of Cyber defense that cannot be neglected. In my research, I concluded that we can’t defend them all, but there are some essential areas where the government can and should have a role. The Department of Homeland Security has identified 16 sectors of vulnerability, including Crypto platforms and exchanges, supply chain, infrastructure, Cloud migration, Banks, Power, Factories/manufacturers, drug makers, fuel supplies, defense contractors, and Transportation.

Cyber security is an area for standardization and increased government regulation. Companies, especially those that provide essential services, should have standard practices. This is an area where the Biden administration has done some great work, building on the progress of the Trump administration before it. It is a bit disappointing that the government only took this seriously in the last decade or so. I’m still waiting to see anyone talk about building the “missile defense” of cyber security.

Cyber Security and the Future

Cyber security is a new frontier, and the future remains rather grey. I’ve talked to several professionals, and the advice ranges from keeping servers updated to changing passwords regularly. The sad reality is that these types of attacks will become more common. In the course of working on this new edition, there was another casino attack from a state-sponsored actor. As the world becomes ever-more connected and integrated, at least in the digital space, geopolitical problems will spill into the di