Cyber Threats to the US and Companies

As Technology becomes more prevalent in our everyday lives, hackers get more for their time. These hackers don't just have their sights set on individuals though; they see companies and even countries and targets. Could a few good hackers be a huge threat to the United States and even huge companies?

Riptech Inc, an internet security firm in VA, verified threat 128,678 cyber-attacks on just 300 of the companies it severs in the last six months of 2001. Google was even thinking about pulling out of China because of a targeted attack on the corporate infrastructure. These attacks are don't even scratch the surface of wide spread attacks.

Here are some scary numbers from The Bureau of Justice in 2005 of 7,818 businesses: 

• 67% detected a minimum of one cyber-crime
• 11% detected cyber theft
• Most did not report the attacks to law enforcement
• 68% victims of cyber theft lost $10,000 or more 

But 2005 the report didn't mention e-commerce, in 2001 fraud losses on e-commerce exceeded $700 million. With the Internet getting used more and more the statistics are no doubt on the rise.

More than 91% of corporations and U.S. government agencies that responded to an annual FBI survey reported computer-security breaches in 2001. Sixty-four percent of these agencies and companies admitted to having financial losses from those attacks. 

From these numbers, it is easy to tell the number of cyber threats is high but it does not get much better. As the government and companies are using more technology, as we examined in the last post, the number of cyber-attacks increases. The fact that some of this technology is so dangerous doesn't help either. Hackers in 2002 were also able to hack into 92 federal computer networks, including those used by the military.

Here is a scary thought, the predator drones (remotely controlled aircraft that are used for surveillance and missile attacks) feed was intercepted by insurgents in Iraq and most likely tipped them off to when and where attacks were going to take place. Worse yet the software used cost the insurgents a whole 26 dollars. 

Many things are easy to hack with the way the world is connected, even the military

If the military being hacked isn't bad enough, the nation's infrastructure is at risk too. If hackers managed to get access to the system that controls the infrastructure, they could manipulate gas lines, the power grid, the floodgates of dams, and more. With that kind of power, a group or even one person could seriously mess up countries since many countries have an infrastructure similar to the United States.

The infrastructure that we rely so much on is largely based on the Internet, which makes it highly vulnerable to attack. The good news in that in 2009 the government showed serious interest in bolstering cyber-security efforts.  This included Obama announcing that he planned to create a cyber-security office in the White House to protect the networks. No plans have been fully implemented yet though.

Another problem in fixing the security issue is how much say the government should have. Utilities and financial institutions are private sectors but create an insecurity to us all. The question of how much power the government should have comes up, making resolutions very controversial and tough to pass.

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The scary part about many of these cyber-crimes is that many of us never hear about them. That's because companies and the government would rather suffer losses than to admit it's insecurities in its systems. They also would hate to lose public confidence.

Information from here, here, and here.