The Evolving Cyberthreat
Even baseball teams are hacking their rivals now. And the latest series in the CSI television franchise? CSI: Cyber, starring Patricia Arquette and Ted Danson. .... (the best antivirus software catches only 5% of online threats; 80% of hackers work for organized crime rings) ..... Chinese irons and teakettles that were illicitly outfitted with Wi-Fi cards, allowing the appliances to secretly join their owners’ home networks and spread viruses and spam. ..... killer robots to plagues that are genetically engineered to attack a specific person (say, a sitting head of state) ........ researchers were able to identify specific people in anonymized data sets by using “a receipt, an Instagram post, and a Tweet about a new purchase or a Facebook post that included the location of a favorite bar or a restaurant.” ....... the United States, unlike many other countries, doesn’t classify privacy as a human right; instead, its laws tend to address privacy only after it’s been violated—in the wake of a data breach, for example. So we are exposed to anyone with the know-how and the inclination to violate it, including our own government. ...... hackers can change their tactics far faster and more easily than we can update our defenses ..... They can sidestep security simply by changing their IP addresses or adding a few lines of code to their malware, and they relentlessly pick apart apps, websites, and devices to find security holes they can exploit. New ways to steal your money and personal information are being dreamed up as you read this. ........ Cybersecurity books are a 20th-century solution to a 21st-century problem, and the solution isn’t working .... far too many people are still using passwords such as “123456” and “password,” and cybercrime is worse than ever. ..... The bad guys are already working together, whether through a catalog of common internet-of-things devices and how to hack them, the live tech support that attends one of the most nefarious malware packages, or the organized cybercrime rings themselves.
