This year may well be the one when the world confronts a cornucopia of security threats
security threats in 2024
examples of threats
fears arising out of new threats posed by
- Artificial Intelligence (AI)
- ncluding Generative AI
- Artificial General Intelligence (AGI).
- disinformation and
- cyber threats
next target
1 The 33rd Summer Olympic Games in France, during July-August 2024, were seen as a real and tempting target for digital, including cyber and other criminals.
2 इसलिए, विश्व भर के विशेषज्ञ स्वयं को ऐसे डिजिटल हमलों के लिए तैयार कर रहे थे, जिनका सामना उन्होंने अब तक नहीं किया था, सिवाय ज्ञात आतंकवादी समूहों द्वारा किए गए हमलों के।
rising profile of both AI and cyber, disinformation attacks
1 Several months down the road, the absence of any spectacular attack has been a relief.
2 This is no reason to relax the vigil as newer variations of digital threats are beginning to emerge.
3 The Paris Games ended peacefully, but eternal vigilance is still the price that security agencies need to pay to ensure proper safety.
The year so far
Disinformation
1 was already having a matter of day in the run up to the elections in Taiwan in January 2024
2 and the atmosphere was loaded with fake posts and videos, causing widespread confusion.
3 This was attributed to China, but we live in a world today where nothing is what it seems.
It is indeed true that spreading disinformation has become far easier with the advent of AI.
Deep fakes
comprising digitally manipulated video, audio, or images, repeatedly hit the headlines today, causing a miasma of disinformation. The truth is revealed much later — and after the damage has been done.
cyber attacks
1 the world needs to realise that we face a new and grim / prob reality which cannot be ignored any longer.
2 National security stands imperilled / danger by these newer threats. But even when it manifests itself, there is not enough comprehension of what is taking place.
Ukraine
A combination of cyber attacks and AI-enabled disinformation had and is still, causing grave havoc in the conflict in Ukraine.
Ukraine is a good case study of how two sides in a conflict could employ disinformation — including AI-enabled disruption — against one another, to each other’s disadvantage.
Together with cyber attacks, this has led to major disruptions in critical infrastructure, including telecommunications and power grids.
The CrowdStrike outage as ‘preview’
software update and Microsoft Windows
1 caused a massive outage, which initially affected parts of the United States, but rapidly spread to different parts of the globe, including India.
2 It disrupted flight operations, air traffic, stock exchanges and more.
3 This was, however, not a cyberattack, but it provided a preview of the kind of disruption that could take place in the event of a cyberattack.
4 According to Microsoft, over eight million Windows devices failed, leading to global disruption on a massive scale.
Some attacks in history
WannaCry ransomware attack
The world may, or may not, remember the widespread disruption that occurred in 2017 in the wake of the WannaCry ransomware attack employing the WannaCry ransomware cryptoworm, which infected well over 2,30,000 computers in 150 countries, resulting in damage amounting to billions of dollars.
Shamoon Computer Virus
The same year witnessed another cyberattack using the Shamoon Computer Virus which was directed mainly against oil companies such as SA ARAMCO (Saudi Arabia) and RasGas (Qatar), and was labelled, at the time, as the ‘biggest hack in history’.
Petya’ Malware
Again, around the same period, a cyberattack involving the ‘Petya’ Malware severely affected banks, electricity grids and a host of other institutions across Europe and the United Kingdom, as also the U.S. and Australia.
Stuxnet ‘attack’ in 2010
Few cyberattacks have, however, had a more devastating impact than that caused by the Stuxnet ‘attack’ in 2010. Over 2,00,000 computers were impacted and physically degraded as a result.
Stuxnet was a malicious computer worm, believed to have been in development for nearly five years, and specifically targeting supervisory control and data acquisition systems.
The target in this case was the Iran nuclear programme, leading to the inference that it was state sponsored.
What is now known is that Stuxnet’s design and architecture is not domain specific, but could be tailored for attacking most modern systems in use.
Growing cyber threats
cyber fraud and cyber hacking
The number of victims of cyber fraud and cyber hacking has grown exponentially in recent years.
Our day-to-day existence is threatened by fraudsters posing as delivery company agents and making delivery attempts, and, in the process, obtaining personal information for malicious use.
There is today a rising curve of false credit card transactions, obtaining personal information in the process to defraud unwitting individuals. Compromising business e-mails is on the increase. One of the most widespread cyber frauds is ‘phishing’, that involves stealing personal information such as customer ID, credit\debit card numbers, and even PIN. The list is extensive and extends to ‘spamming’ as well (where someone receives unsolicited commercial messages sent through one of the many electronic messaging systems). ‘Identity theft’ is among the most serious dangers that has now become widespread.
Across the democratic world, governments are seeking to put in place proper systems to deal with digital threats. Industry and private institutions, however, appear to be lagging behind. It is the latter segment that is, perhaps, the most vulnerable to digital attacks. Having in place firewalls, anti-virus defences and a good back-up and disaster recovery system are not enough. Most CEOs of companies, again, are not adequately equipped to deal with digital threats. Hence it might be useful to have a chief information and security officer to look at their systems and advise them as to what they should do.
Awareness of the growing danger of digital threats is but the first step in the battle against cyber and AI-directed threats. Unauthorised use of Generative AI content has already become the stock-in-trade of digital bullying. Preventing this demands a great deal of effort and adequate budgetary allocations — whether in the private or public domain.
More than anything else, potentially dangerous digital technologies require more, and the specific, attention of those in-charge, specially in the case of democracies. Awareness about digital bullying and other forms of manipulation is fundamental if we are to prevent situations getting out of hand. More than anything else, there is a need to create a realisation that the struggle against digital threats calls for coordinated action. Also, a realisation that nations, especially democracies, are today under attack from a new and different source. There is, hence, every need to counter digital surveillance, disinformation, bullying and manipulation, for our survival.
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