Prepare for the Attack – Here we are again, with another warning, one that readers we hope you take very seriously

BY SIMONE J. SMITH

“There’s a gathering cyber storm,” Sadie Creese, a Professor of Cyber Security at the University of Oxford, said during an interview at the World Economic Forum’s Annual Meeting 2023 in Davos, Switzerland. “This storm is brewing, and it’s really hard to anticipate just how bad that will be.”

“This is a global threat, and it calls for a global response and enhanced and coordinated action,” Jürgen Stock, the Secretary-General of the International Criminal Police Organization (INTERPOL), said in Davos. “The key to winning the battle against cybercrime is, of course, to work together to make it a priority across the geopolitical fault lines.”

During the holidays, I had a chance to Netflix and chill, and I came upon a story of two families fighting for survival amid an inexplicable blackout. Only one thing was for sure: there is no going back to normal. In the movie, technology was mysteriously on the fritz, and the deer around the families’ Long Island hideout were acting strange.

Leave the World Behind is here and its chilling storyline leads well into what I am going to present to you today. It stars: Julia Roberts, Mahershala Ali, and Ethan Hawke, and is the creative apocalyptic thriller from Mr. Robot creator Sam Esmail. The film is based on the bestselling 2020 novel of the same name by Rumaan Alam, who also serves as Executive Producer of the film alongside: Barack and Michelle Obama, Tonia Davis, Daniel M. Stillman, and Nick Krishnamurthy.

“I had been interested in doing a disaster movie for a while, and I specifically wanted to do one surrounding a cyber-attack because I don’t think a lot of people have a concrete idea of what that would look like or how detrimental it would be, not just in America, but globally,” writer and director Esmail told Netflix. “The impact of technology on society is something that I’ve always been fascinated by, because I really do think it dramatically changed the way we interact and evolve as people.”

As a media conglomerate, TCN has been warning our community of pending catastrophe’s sometimes to no avail. We have been called conspiracy theorists, we have been harassed by our Canadian government, and members of the community. Our last warnings of what was to come with the pandemic fell on deaf ears, and it was not until the dust settled that people began to come to us and share with us their stories, thanking us for the work that we have done.

Well, we are here again, with another warning, one that readers we hope you take very seriously. We are not creating the news; we are reporting what many others will not report until it is too late.

“Not a Question of If, but When!”

In November 2020, the World Economic Forum (WEF) and Carnegie Endowment for International Peace co-produced a report that warned that the global financial system had become increasingly vulnerable to cyber-attacks. Advisors to the group that produced the report included representatives from: the Federal Reserve, the Bank of England, the International Monetary Fund, Wall Street giants like JP Morgan Chase and Silicon Valley behemoths like Amazon.

The ominous report was published just months after the World Economic Forum had conducted a simulation of that very event – a cyber-attack that brings the global financial system to its knees (sound familiar) – in partnership with Russia’s largest bank, which is due to jumpstart that country’s economic “digital transformation” with the launch of its own central bank-backed digital currency.

In September 2021, the largest information sharing organization of the financial industry, whose known members include Bank of America, Wells Fargo and CitiGroup, have again warned that nation-state hackers and cybercriminals were poised to work together to attack the global financial system in the short term.

The Cyber Policy Initiative’s November 2020 report officially titled “International Strategy to Better Protect the Financial System,”  begins by noting that the global financial system, like many other systems, is “going through unprecedented digital transformation, which was being accelerated by the coronavirus pandemic.”

In the report it states, “This requires countries not only to better organize themselves domestically but also to strengthen international cooperation to defend against, investigate, prosecute and ideally prevent future attacks. This implies that the financial sector and financial authorities must regularly interact with law enforcement and other national security agencies in unprecedented ways, both domestically and internationally.”

The World Economic Forum’s Global Risks Report 2023 ranked cybercrime and cyber insecurity as the 8^th biggest risk in terms of severity of impact, both in the short term (next two years) and over the next decade. Let’s get our community caught up with what has been happening in the cyber world over the last few years

Genesis Market, one the world’s largest, illicit online marketplaces, was shut down in 2023 in a police operation that involved over a dozen international law enforcement agencies. “Operation Cookie Monster” resulted in hundreds of thousands of stolen identities and online access credentials being seized. The FBI and the Dutch National Police spearheaded the crackdown, which resulted in more than 100 arrests worldwide and served as a major blow to global cybercrime efforts, according to officials.

The platform offered over 80 million accounts access credentials from more than 1.5 million compromised computers worldwide since its inception. This includes thousands of credentials stolen from over 460,000 computer devices that were advertised for sale at the time “Operation Cookie Monster” closed down the site.

October 2023 also saw the biggest ever distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack, with internet companies including Google and Amazon warning users that these types of attacks could cause widespread disruption unless cybersecurity measures are stepped up. DDoS attacks, aimed to make websites unreachable by overwhelming them with bogus requests for data, are nothing new but they are becoming increasingly sophisticated and disruptive.

The World Economic Forum’s Global Cybersecurity Outlook 2023 points to the convergence of geopolitical instability, the arrival of AI that can amplify cyberattacks and a lack of cybersecurity expertise as drivers of such cyber risks.

Cyberattacks such as: phishing, ransomware and DDoS attacks are on the rise. Cloudflare, a major US cybersecurity firm that provides protection services for over 30% of Fortune 500 companies, found that DDoS attacks increased 79% year-over-year in 2022.

Another issue that has been raised is something that I wrote about a few editions ago; the world needs 3.4 million cybersecurity experts to support today’s global economy, but industries are struggling to fill that gap. The World Economic Forum’s Global Cybersecurity Outlook 2023 report shows that 59% of business leaders and 64% of cyber leaders ranked talent recruitment and retention as a key challenge for managing cyber resilience. The industries that reported a lack of skills were mainly in critical infrastructure industries like energy utilities.

It is a cornucopia of these technological instabilities and uncertainties that brought together over 150 of the world’s foremost cybersecurity leaders from: business, government, international organizations, civil society and academia to foster collaboration on making cyberspace safer and more resilient.

It appears that business leaders are far more aware of the cyber threat than the year prior. In fact, 91% of respondents said they believe a far-reaching and catastrophic cyber event is at least somewhat likely in the next two years. However, the report concludes that organizations continue to face significant challenges when it comes to effectively addressing cyber concerns.

“Vulnerabilities within the critical manufacturing sector haven’t gone unnoticed by cybercriminals either,” said Aleksandr Yampolskiy, SecurityScorecard’s CEO.

The Forum’s report notes that the potential targets for cyber-attacks are increasing. Today, targets include not only government agencies and major corporations, but largely any organization that handles consumer data—no matter how small.

Consumers, community, you too need to increase your cybersecurity awareness in 2023, experts say. The need is especially crucial given that more and more everyday products—ranging from a car to a coffee maker—are connected to the internet.

In 2023 we dealt with a few technological interruptions and many of us nearly lost our minds; we know that the storm is coming and what we experienced is not even the tip of the iceberg. Take heed community, watch Leave the World Behind, and prepare yourself for what is to come.