Cyberattack Is Blunted as Governments, Companies Gain Upper Hand
This article by Jordan Robertson and by Rebecca Penty
Governments and companies around the world began to gain the upper hand against the first wave of an unrivaled global cyberattack, even as the assault was poised to continue claiming victims this week.
More than 200,000 computers in at least 150 countries have so far been infected, according to Europol, the European Union’s law enforcement agency. The U.K.’s National Cyber Security Centre said new cases of so-called ransomware are possible “at a significant scale.”
"For now, it does not look like the number of infected computers is increasing," said a Europol spokesman. "We will get a decryption tool eventually, but for the moment, it’s still a live threat and we’re still in disaster recovery mode."
At Germany’s national Deutsche Bahn railroad, workers were laboring under "high pressure" Monday to repair remaining glitches with train stations’ electronic departure boards, a spokesman said.
I don’t know how you feel about Wikileaks and Edward Snowdon. Personally I’m conflicted because the USA’s NSA has known about weaknesses in the global tech infrastructure for a long time and has used them for its own purposes while at the same time accepting that cybercriminals were also using them to achieve profits. I’m angry because if they were aware of the risk why wasn’t more done to protect it? Nevertheless, I’m sympathetic with the need for surveillance in an increasingly connected world where there are groups that challenge my personal security. However, that is largely beside the point now since these events have already happened and the potential for more cyberattacks and more intense attacks, not to mention during war, are inevitable.
The biggest challenge for the cybersecurity sector is the loss incurred by a breech is just not high enough to justify the cost of preventing one. The global ransomware attack over the weekend brings the issue of just how porous the world’s technology infrastructure is. We have been inured to the risks that cyber represents because our credit card purchases are insured and most of us have not been subject to a ransomware attack. However the reality today is that all of our data is now available and that has happened for no other reason than it has not been cost effective to protect it.
The Cybersecurity ETF (HACK) has been trending higher in a step sequence for more than a year and a sustained move below the trend mean would be required to begin to question medium-term uptrend potential.