Jay Evensen
  • Front Page
  • Opinions
  • Second Thoughts
  • Portfolio
  • Awards
  • About

Security breaches: Just how vulnerable are we?

5/29/2019

0 Comments

 
Internet security is kind of like your sewage system. You hardly think about it until something goes wrong, and then you can’t think of much else.
​

But it’s more important than that, of course. Unless you have a smart toilet (it’s a thing; look it up), your bathroom may be one of the few places left untouched by the internet.
The rest of your world is connected in some way, which means it’s vulnerable in many ways.
A car ran into a poll a few blocks from my house last Tuesday. As a result, the internet was off for thousands of people in our neighborhood for several hours. I couldn’t watch TV, talk on my landline or pay my bills online. In the end, the inconvenience was temporary and relatively minor, but it was a reminder of how much we rely on the internet for everyday life.
More startling, I recently received an email informing me that an electronic security key I had acquired to protect my email from hackers contains a flaw. Instead of protecting me, it makes my email more vulnerable.
Worse, I wasn’t sure whether the notice was legitimate or a clever attempt to compromise my security — a confusion that remained until an IT worker at the paper told me it was real and I needed to take action.
Even more startling, an internet provider in Murray was attacked last weekend by a “distributed denial of service,” or DDoS scheme. The attacker demanded $750 in bitcoin to go away, and in the meantime slowed service to a crawl for several hours. The provider, Sumo, told the Deseret News it didn’t pay the ransom, figuring that would only encourage more attacks.
And much more startling that all of these, a security company called Red Balloon recently discovered a flaw in Cisco routers that could allow a hacker to get hold of all the data that flows through it, all while the router would keep telling everyone else it was still operating correctly.
Why is this a problem? The Cisco 1001-X routers are used by businesses, corporate offices and stock exchanges. As Lily Hay Newman wrote for wired.com, “Given Cisco’s ubiquity, the potential fallout would be enormous.”
Thankfully, the flaw was discovered, and by a security company, not a nefarious hacker. But experts worry about the fix and the “novel concepts” the flaw may have introduced to people with bad intentions.
If you aren’t getting the point yet, I’ll spell it out for you. The more interconnected our world becomes, the more vulnerable we become. As Phillip Lohaus wrote recently for the American Enterprise Institute, “Since 2015, the number of devices connected to the Internet has increased by nearly 40 percent.” For hackers, this has increased potential targets and ways to exploit weaknesses.
Against this frayed and distressed backdrop, a risk-analysis company called SecurityScorecard released a report a few days ago examining the computer networks of 29 political parties in 11 nations.
By now, most people are familiar with Russian attempts to influence elections in the free world, and with their infiltration of servers belonging to the Democratic Party in 2016. The report found that both Republicans and Democrats have improved security since then, but that both parties still are vulnerable to a dedicated hacker — one, say, with the kind of funding a major government could provide.
The Mueller Report confirmed what numerous U.S. intelligence agencies have found, which is that Russia wants to meddle in our elections and disrupt our society in general — something many people can’t seem to emerge from their partisan foxholes long enough to acknowledge.
Younger Americans might be prone to smirk at older people who have trouble navigating the many facets of the digital world. The truth, however, is that few of us, young or old, truly understand it, or its vulnerabilities.
New York Times editorial board member Sarah Jeong compared the Cisco problem to being told the steel beams in the building where you work are vulnerable but “probably OK.” They might fall apart if the wind blows a certain way or the temperature is just right, or then again, they might just buckle. “I’d say this kind of risk is just unacceptable,” she said.
Indeed, it is. It also sounds a lot more dangerous than a sewage system failure, and like a wakeup call for the nation to take cyber security more seriously.
0 Comments

Your comment will be posted after it is approved.


Leave a Reply.

    RSS Feed

    Search this site


    Like what you read here?

      Please subscribe below, and we'll let you know when there is a new opinion.

    Enter your email address:

    Delivered by FeedBurner

    Picture

    The author

    Jay Evensen is the Senior Editorial Columnist of the Deseret News. He has nearly 40 years experience as a reporter, editor and editorial writer in Oklahoma, New York City, Las Vegas and Salt Lake City. He also has been an adjunct journalism professor at Brigham Young and Weber State universities.

    Archives

    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    November 2012
    October 2012
    September 2012
    August 2012
    July 2012
    June 2012

    Categories

    All
    Campaign 2012
    Congress
    Crime
    Culture
    Iran
    Oil And Gas
    Poverty
    Steroids
    Taxes
    Utah
    Washington
    World Events
    World Events

    Links

    Deseret News
    Newslink
    Marianne Evensen's blog

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.