Cyber warfare is a threat we can’t ignore

Friday’s attack on web infrastructure in America shows that we are all vulnerable

Dyn, a New Hampshire internet service company, was hit by a major cyber attack last Friday. Jim Cole / AP Photo

Our first thoughts about what the internet is normally involve smartphones and computers. Increasingly, though, everyday objects have network connectivity baked in and they are a large part of the internet. From baby monitors to doorbells, these devices form the so-called internet of things (IOT) and far too many people take it for granted. On Friday morning, the east coast of the United States was hit by a major cyber attack that was carried out with simple IOT devices and rendered large parts of the internet useless for most of the day.

The attack was remarkably simple to carry out. Hackers attacked major domain name service providers (think of them as way stations of the internet that organise domain names) with a denial of service attack. Using IOT devices that still had their factory settting (meaning passwords were easy to crack), the hackers were able to direct large amounts of garbage data to these providers until their servers were overloaded and failed. Simple gadgets were repurposed to take down the web.

While this attack rendered popular websites such as Netflix unusable, it represents something much more than a simple inconvenience. Hackers have already broken into emails of political parties in the United States with the intention of swaying the results of the election. Friday’s attack, regardless of who is behind it, demonstrates that cyber warfare is now an ever-present concern not just for the United States but for the world as a whole.

Perhaps that is the beauty and the danger of the internet. When critical servers are attacked in the US, websites in Britain crash. The internet ties us all together to a remarkable degree. A cyber attack in Japan could have ramifications in Chile. What is more disturbing is that critical web infrastructure is involved in everything from civil aviation to electricty grids across the world. Beyond the nuisance of not being able to access Netflix, power could fail and traffic lights could stop working if critical infrastructure is attacked.

As such, securing the internet of things is a matter of civil defence for this country and all others. We must not ignore the cyber warfare that is unfolding around us. We should take necessary precautions in cooperation with our allies around the planet. Cyberwarfare, like terrorism, is part of a basket of threats that we must continue to monitor and prepare for. This week’s sucessful attack on the US is sober reminder of what could happen.