{"id":7739,"date":"2019-01-30T08:07:52","date_gmt":"2019-01-30T13:07:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=7739"},"modified":"2019-02-14T07:41:38","modified_gmt":"2019-02-14T12:41:38","slug":"cyberthreats-coming-to-a-company-near-you","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=7739","title":{"rendered":"Cyberthreats: Coming to a Company Near You"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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The absurdity of a Seth Rogen movie precipitating an\ninternational incident may have obscured that episode\u2019s significance as a\nbellwether in international cyberterrorism. Companies around the world have experienced\nmassive thefts of intellectual property and disruption to their operations. Yet\nthere\u2019s no clear way forward for them. Three dramatic episodes illustrate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Destruction of a\nTarget\u2019s Network<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Remember Sony\u2019s 2014 dust-up with North Korea<\/a>? Given the reviews, The Interview<\/em> would likely have quickly sunk into obscurity had The Hermit Kingdom not made an escalating series of threats, saying release of the film would be considered an act of terrorism. While the U.S. State Department was telling Sony it wasn\u2019t in the business of censoring movies, North Korean hackers were penetrating Sony\u2019s computer system top-to-bottom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our government was clueless about the company\u2019s peril. Says\nDavid Sanger, \u201chackers working from laptops somewhere in Asia were not the kind\nof security threat [the NSA] was established to detect. And movie studios weren\u2019t\nthe targets the American intelligence community was focused on protecting.\u201d The\nresult was a worldwide takedown of the company\u2019s computer systems. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Proliferating Malware<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The NotPetya\ncode<\/a>, the malicious product of Russian military hackers, ultimately hit two\nthousand targets worldwide and cost companies an estimated $10 billion. Among the\nworst affected were the U.S. pharmaceutical giant Merck, FedEx\u2019s European\nsubsidiary, a French construction company, and Danish shipping company Maersk. Maersk,\nwhich lost some $300 million, salvaged its business only because a domain\ncontroller in Ghana already had been knocked offline when the malware struck.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Corporate Espionage<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

You\u2019re probably familiar with how three Chinese hackers\nstole some 630,000 computer files related to the development and design of\nBoeing\u2019s C-17 military transport plane, saving the Chinese government decades\nand billions in R&D. When the Chinese plane\u2014the Xian Y-20\u2014debuted at a Zhuhai\nair show, parked near the American C-17, the similarity between the two planes\nwas inescapable. A gift to the Chinese from U.S. taxpayers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to a recent Wired<\/em>\narticle by Garrett\nM. Graff<\/a>, \u201cChina\u2019s extended campaign of commercial espionage has raided\nalmost every highly developed economy, but far and away its biggest targets\nhave been the military secrets of the United States.\u201d He says many American\ncompanies were aware of the hacking, but have kept quiet to keep the huge China\nmarket. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What Next?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Such intrusions demonstrate that it isn\u2019t enough to assume every company can (or will) sufficiently protect its own networks. \u201cAn individual company simply doesn\u2019t have the resources or the capabilities to defend against a committed nation state attacker,\u201d said Jamil Jaffer, founder of George Mason University\u2019s National Security Institute in a recent Cipher Brief interview<\/a><\/em>. Yet, for a host of reasons, government can\u2019t do protect every business either. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jaffer believes companies in key industries must start sharing threat data with each other. Though that\u2019s against the grain, in a small way, it\u2019s beginning to happen. Government may have a role, too, in some cases, depending on the target, the severity of the threat, and applicable law. But this strategy will take time, and as all these complex relationships and responsibilities are being debated and worked out, the hackers hurtle full speed ahead. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases\u2014a few pennies to put in a jar to pay my WordPress bills. When you make a purchase through the link on my website, you help me fill the jar. Thank you!<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The absurdity of a Seth Rogen movie precipitating an international incident may have obscured that episode\u2019s significance as a bellwether in international cyberterrorism. Companies around the world have experienced massive thefts of intellectual property and disruption to their operations. Yet … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7740,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Cyberthreats: Coming to a Company Near You - corporate threats mount, while progress to counter them is painfully slow","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[52,193,268,35,186,104],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7739","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-crime","category-espionage","category-politics","category-real-life","category-technology","category-the-morgue"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/vweisfeld.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/The-Interview.jpg?fit=329%2C445&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-20P","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7739","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7739"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7739\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7742,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7739\/revisions\/7742"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7740"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7739"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7739"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7739"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}