Cyber-Pandemic: The World in Ruins

by Stephen Comeau

When I first sat down to write this article, I was going to talk to you about changes in email security, a dangerous Bluetooth exploit recently discovered, and a few other looming cyber-threats generally worthy of discussion.  To my disbelief, however, as 2020 unfolded, we came to face a world transfigured and transformed.  We have witnessed the global fall into disarray as we confronted a worsening pandemic, social unrest, and the impact of a rotting infrastructure.  As these problems arose, we found ourselves embarrassingly ill-equipped to deal with them.  It feels like our world is now entering a post-apocalyptic phase.  Too little seems to make sense any more than previously went unquestioned; neither our nation's leaders nor its people can seem to agree on even the essentials necessary to see us safely through to better times.  Amidst the cry of "fake news," not even facts are seen as indisputable anymore.

The more we fight and argue, the more our world continues to burn - with the fires of both pandemic an social unrest - with no clear end in sight.

As if the global unrest were not enough, the current climate of disarray has precipitated, as if by open invitation, a glandular increase in cyber-threats, perhaps the greatest in recent history.  To be honest, I am not even sure where to begin.  It is really that bad out there right now and has been since the start of February.  Cyber-attacks had increased, by that point, at a rate of 37 percent above what is considered typical (according to Infosecurity Magazine).  That is an increase of six times the normal rate.  Sadly, this has been only the start of the cyber-pandemic surge.  Since February, the number of cyber-attacks and threats that have occurred have increased at an even more alarming rate.

The most considerable part of the overall growth in cybersecurity threats was not the increase in phishing, which has increased by over 600 percent, nor in the alarming increase in state-sponsored cyber-terrorism and voter manipulation.  These threats are admittedly significant, as considered in their own right.

No, my biggest concern is in how many of these attacks are directly focused on pharmaceutical companies, in an attempt to delay or prevent the creation of a vaccine for this pandemic.  It honestly boggles my mind why anyone would want to attack such needed research, universally benefiting all - including potentially the cyber-criminals themselves - or to try to delay the onset of development activities that could save so many lives.  If anything, we should be working together to try to overcome such a dire threat to humanity as a whole.  But no, we go ahead and try to destroy ourselves, as usual.  How much of a sense of self-preservation do we need before we wake up and realize that this pandemic is a problem for us all?  Neither greed nor pride should get in the way of a solution.  This epidemic is a species trial, a test of our essential nature as human beings, worthy to inhabit this planet for the foreseeable future.  It is a test we are called upon to pass as one race of beings.  We do not have time here for petty squabbles.  We need to come together if we are to win against this crafty pandemic.

To make matters worse and more discouraging, it is expected that the most substantial of these attacks on our pharmaceutical companies have been sponsored by other countries in an attempt to acquire our knowledge on the virus and to slow down our progress towards a cure.  Among the list of suspected countries are China and Russia.  Again, all such attacks are stupid and misguided; they hamper the cooperation we need to arrive at a solution sooner.  Our nation's scientists, currently working on a vaccine, have already agreed to share any research information with their counterparts in other countries.  So why would anyone want to attack pharmaceutical companies, thus potentially decelerating the overall effort?  When the information and progress will be shared freely, it doesn't make much sense to try to steal it, now does it?  Not unless you have a purely destructive end in mind.

From one standpoint, this pandemic has done us a favor.  It has cast a revealing light on a lot of issues in our society that needs to be resolved.  Do not get me wrong; most of these issues have been lying dormant there already.  But unfortunately for us, it takes seeing the world almost in ruins for us to realize that we need to do something about them.

Take our nation's infrastructure, for example.  Most of it has been outdated or nonexistent in many areas of the country for more than a decade now.  We still have regions working off of dial-up networks - you know, the technology we used to access the Internet back in the late-1980s and early-1990s, the kind that plugs into our Cat 2 phone boxes.  This is America!  We should be the most technologically evolved country in the world.  So please explain to me how this is even possible.  Why isn't our entire infrastructure backbone fiber by now?  Why doesn't everyone have affordable access to gigabit speeds around the country regardless of where they live?

The political roadblocks are mind-boggling too.  We have technological and social means.  There should not be much in the way of cost concerns.  The equipment needed to make a fiber backbone infrastructure reality is not that pricey anymore.  So, the only thing I can come up with as to why we don't currently have it has to do with politics.  But the greater issue we face here is more basic and essential than any limited political agenda or infrastructure development alone.  We need networks we can secure properly, networks that are secure, in large part, because they are ultra-modern.  This now becomes a defense issue.  It has led us to one of the bigger reasons why we are now having such a giant cybersecurity problem in our country.  And this all stretches back to conditions before the pandemic - which brings me to my next point.

The pandemic helped to shine a light on our security gaps.  But it also showed us how ill-prepared we have been, as a nation, in addressing any increase in cyber-attacks.  It feels like we have been sent into battle without rifles that can fire.

When combining an uptake of cyber-traffic, an increase in all forms of cyber-attack, an ever-persistent dearth of capable experts, the poor condition of the country's technical infrastructure, and the deluge of new technical challenges created by the pandemic, we find ourselves in the perfect storm.  It has left us scrambling just to get caught up to where we can hope to meet existing threats, let alone begin to address the novel ones that are just now looming on the horizon.  The truth, as now revealed, is plain and agonizing: we did not have a plan to fight the challenges we now face and we are now, as a country, paying a heavy price for it.

One thing is now clear.  We have a lot of work and preparedness to do if we are to better deflect future attacks.  We have a lot of things to seriously ponder, as a country, as individuals, and as a race of beings in general.  We will have some big and critical decisions to make if we are to secure our future properly and to make it a better and brighter one.

So, with this emphatic word of warning, I leave you to consider the critical ideas and issues we focused on here.  I hope that, by the time you read this article, we will all have a better understanding of what is needed to make our future more positive and more secure.