Reflective Essay

The Real Threat of Cyberattacks

Emmanuel Domenech

University of Maryland

 

The Real Threat of Cyberattacks

Hackers, in the past have developed a modern and sophisticated way of creating income for themselves. Hackers as the top of the line in software development, have move up the chain of technology. Adopting cloud computing, artificial intelligence, software as a service and encryption, they created a non-stop threat to major companies. Most of the companies fail to take the most basic protective measures against cyberattacks. While the cybercriminals use simple and advance technology to target unsecure organizations, is unlikely for them to stop this attack. Hackers understand the power they possess, it is too easy and rewarding, and the chances of being punished is too low. The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) estimated that cybercrime costs the world’s economy almost $500 billion, or about 0.7% of global income (Lewis, 2018). These numbers are positioning cybercrimes on the top profitable employment. People and companies adopt new advance technology, more protective software’s and more sophisticated. The problem is like the experts on security protocols continue to update their tools, hackers fast learn how to break them. There are high expectations on cybercrimes to increase, and with the help of new and easy devices like Internet of Things (IoT). We have seen that IoT is used not only to steal personal information or to gain access to data or networks, but also to enable Distribute Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks. The impacts of cyberattacks on nation’s economy includes global costs of cyberattacks; ransomware attack implications; additional costs on financial institutions, while the recent cyberattacks being WannaCry; NotPetya; GitHub DDoS; Yahoo attack aided by the tor network, bitcoin and cyberattack-as-a-service.

One of the impacts of cyberattacks is the global cost. The cyberspace has created an avenue for criminals to launch their criminal activities with the help of different cybercrimes. Reports from British officials indicate that almost half of reported crimes in the United Kingdom are cyber-related. The global cost of cybercrime has risen to a staggering $600 billion from recent CSIS estimates (Lewis, 2018). In 2014, cybercrime cost the global economy 0.62 percent of the global Gross Domestic Product (GDP). In 2016, cybercrime cost the global economy 0.8 percent of the global GDP (Lewis, 2018). The global cost of cybercrime is brought about by the following elements: intellectual property loss and loss of business confidential data; hacked personal identifiable information leading to fraud and financial crimes; high costs to secure networks and systems; companies risk reputational damage and the cost associated with opportunity costs that a business suffers after cyberattacks like lack of trust.

Another economic threat of cyberattacks is estimation issues. The cost estimation of cyberattacks has various challenges. Victims of cybercrimes do not report such cases to the appropriate authorities and this results to underreporting of cyberattacks. For instance, in the United Kingdom, statistics show that only 13 percent of the total cybercrimes are reported (Lewis, 2018). The reason for this low percent of cybercrimes, is because of the lack of knowledge on processing cyberattack. Consequently, during estimation of the global cost of cyberattacks, underreporting poses a major challenge.

Another impact of cyber-attacks to nations’ economy is the cost it imposes to financial institutions. Banks and other financial institutions have always been a number one target by cyber criminals (Tarik, 2018). Cyberattacks have piled heavy costs on banks as they work hard to counter cases of fraud and theft in their institutions. In fact, research shows that banks invest on cybersecurity three times more than other institutions. A former NSA director once said nation states are hacking into banks and rob financial institutions of millions (Tarik, 2018). Research from CSIS show that Russia and North Korea are among the top countries in nation state cybercrimes.

Ransomware is another bigger threat to nation’s economy. Ransomware cybercrimes are growing popular day by day. Talk of Petya to the recent WannaCry ransomware. Ransomware often targets big companies, middle scale companies and individual. The WannaCry ransomware infected big brand organizations including NHS hospitals in the UK and other individuals and was demanding $300 per computer (Michelson, 2017). Ransomware is gaining popularity because of the less effort and cost required to infect thousands of computer systems. Ransomware is serious that FBI reports shows that in 2016 almost $209 million was paid in ransom, this shows how much the nation is losing to cyberattacks (Liska & Gallo, 2016). Ransomware attacks have also been made popular by the emergence of Ransomware-as-a-Service (RaaS). RaaS extends the target that a single cybercriminal can reach by making his ransomware code open for other cybercriminals to use on their targets.

Another threat associated with cyberattacks is intellectual property theft. Cybercriminals have invented new ways of stealing intellectual property and business confidential information over the internet. Intellectual property ranges from product design, trade secrets, to internal strategic business information. When business loses its trade secrets or business plans to a competitor, the business might be forced to a decline or lose its market share. Other cybercriminal targets military computer systems to steal very confidential information and that can result to national security breach (Relia, 2015). For instance, according to US officials, China was involved for the cyberespionage against US where IP and other valuable information were stolen and as result US ran to a probable cost of $20 billion (Relia, 2015).

Another type of cyberattacks is identity theft. Identity theft is among the top issues that internet users care about. However, reports from Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) show that the costs that arise from identity theft are relatively low compared to the above costs (Relia, 2015). Identity theft found its way in this list because most if not all users do not know if they have been hacked or not. For instance, a bank employee browsing the internet might be hacked and his identity used by a cybercriminal to launch massive attacks on his banking institution.

Tor and Bitcoin have in one way or another assisted in cybercrimes. As technology is advancing, cybercriminals are taking fully advantage to use the same technology to launch massive attacks. The Tor network enables people to browse the internet unanimously, this has created an opportunity for cyber criminals to hide their personal details while using bitcoin as a mode of payment. Bitcoin, a cryptocurrency, allows users to conceal their personal information while doing transactions online. For instance, the WannaCry ransomware encrypted computer files and demanded $300 for each infected computer to be paid in bitcoin. Cyber criminals are taking full advantage in these advancements in technologies with the latest being the use of most advanced cryptocurrencies like Monero and secure marketplaces like OpenBazaar.

Cybercrime-as-a-Service (CaaS) also accounts to the popularity of cyberattacks today. Cybercrime is becoming a business to some. Cyberattacks have been made easier to starters with the availability of exploit tools and malware services online (Manky, 2013). Today, it is very easy to learn how to hack with a lot of forums and kits available in the web. Advanced cyber criminals are working hard to invent new tools and work with others to create exploit tools that are more powerful and weaponized. The tor network and bitcoin has aided to the development of CaaS where hackers can sell and purchase hack tools online with guaranteed anonymity (Manky, 2013).

WannaCry is one of the recent cyber-attacks that was reported in May 2017. WannaCry was a type of ransomware that targeted Microsoft Windows users with an estimated 200,000 users across 150 countries being hit by the attack (Michelson, 2017). Like any other ransomware, WannaCry took control of your system by encrypting the whole system and then demanded a ransom in Bitcoin to decrypt the system and get access to your files again (Michelson, 2017). Each computer infected by WannaCry was supposed to pay $300 in bitcoin with the amount rising in the next day (Michelson, 2017). Among the large organizations hit by WannaCry were NHS hospitals in UK, Telefonica in Spain, MegaFon mobile operator in Russia and Renault factories in France (Michelson, 2017). WannaCry used a Windows exploit code called ExternalBlue that was leaked from the NSA servers and it targeted faulty Windows server message block (SMB) to enable sending of nefarious packets over the network undetected (Michelson, 2017).

Another recent cyberattack is NotPetya. Petya was another ransomware that spread via phishing in 2016. Petya’s infected computer systems by encrypting the master boot record making it impossible for one to access his/her computer files (Pitts, 2017). In June 2017, a more advanced and weaponized version of Petya started spreading, it was more dangerous and different from the first ransomware, Petya, that it was referred to as NotPetya. NotPetya affected accounting software in Ukraine and it spread using ExternalBlue exploit tool just like WannaCry (Pitts, 2017). It was believed NotPetya cyberattack was launched by Russia against Ukraine however, Russia denied those allegations.

GitHub is another latest victim to fall under the horns of a massive denial of service (DDOS) attack. GitHub experienced 1.35TB of traffic per second on February 28, 2018. As a result of the DDOS attack, GitHub went offline intermittently and managed to respond to the attack in about 20 minutes (Chadd, 2018). The attack on GitHub was so severe than the DDOS attack on Dyn that peaked at 1.2TB of traffic per second in 2016. The DDOS attack exploited servers that incorporated the Memcached memory caching system, these servers often return large volume of data for very simple requests (Chadd, 2018).

Another recent cyber-attack reported was the Yahoo mail attack. Yahoo mail was hit with a massive cyberattack with almost 3 billion Yahoo mail addresses affected by the attack (Walters, 2016). The attack happened in 2013 but the impacts of the attack in October 2017 (Walters, 2016). The attack targeted users’ passwords and back email addresses and then encrypted them with weak encryption techniques. The attack had some negative repercussions to the owners who had then sold Yahoo to Verizon. The Yahoo email system attack was not made public indicating there are thousands of similar cyberattacks happening in the world everyday which are not known to the public.

Software and system update are the first approach towards protecting oneself against cyberattacks (Wiener, 2018). WannaCry managed to infect Windows computers but only those that had not patched their computers up to date (Michelson, 2017). Always update your system to the latest update available. Updates ranges from phone, any IoT device to your entire organization network. Cybercriminals are always working behind the clock to unearth any vulnerabilities in a system or network, failing to update your system regularly can make you fall a victim to cyberattacks.

Nation-states need to form laws that will deal with cyberattack to protect people from cyberattacks. Most countries with no or few cyberattacks regulations are often under high risks of cybercrimes and can also be the source of cybercrimes for their neighboring countries. International laws will prevent nation state cybercrimes as discussed above. The laws should protect the nation, private sector and individuals against these attacks.

Cybercriminals have slowly adopted cybercrimes as a source of incomes for example through ransom. While companies have adopted new technologies like cloud computing and artificial intelligence, cybercriminals have used technology as an opportunity to launch massive attacks to these organizations. Cyberattacks have very negative impacts to the nation’s economy. Global costs as a result of cyberattacks ranges from loss of personal data to costs of securing network and systems. Cyberattacks estimation costs have been greatly affected by several issues including underreporting of these cyberattacks. Banks and other financial institutions are the most targeted institutions by cybercriminals. Ransomware is among the top cybercrimes that organizations must protect themselves from. Intellectual property theft and identity theft are also among the threats that arise from cyberattacks. There are some factors that have contributed to the success of cybercrimes and some of them includes Cybercrime-as-a-service and new technologies such as Tor network and bitcoin. Some of the recent cyberattacks experienced includes the WannaCry, NotPetya, GitHub DDOS attack and Yahoo email system attack. Protecting against cyberattacks takes a lot more effort but periodically updating your system and existence of rules governing cyberspace can greatly reduce cyberattacks to large extent.

References

Berg, H. (2018). Cybersecurity of critical infrastructures such as nuclear facilities. Energetika, 63(4). doi:10.6001/energetika.v63i4.3622

Chadd, A. (2018, July). DDoS attacks: past, present and future. Retrieved from ScienceDirect: https://doi.org/10.1016/S1353-4858(18)30069-2

Lewis, James, author. (2018). Economic impact of cybercrime, no slowing down. Retrieved from McAfee website: ///C:/Users/EMMANUEL%20DOMENECH/AppData/Local/Microsoft/Windows/INetCache/IE/GKNDVOES/rp-economic-impact-cybercrime.pdfLiska, A., & Gallo, T. (2016). Ransomware: Defending Against Digital Extortion. Sebastopol CA: O'Rielly Media.

Manky, D. (2013). Cybercrime as a service: a very modern business. Computer Fraud & Security, 9 - 13.

Michelson, D. (2017). Wannacry Ransomware Attack: Learning the Essentials.

Pitts, V. (2017). Cyber Crimes : History of World's Worst Cyber Attacks. New Delhi: Vij Books India Private Limited.

Relia, S. (2015). Cyber Warfare: Its Implications on National Security. Vij Books.

Tarik, N. (2018). Impact of Cyberattacks on Financial Institutions. Journal of Internet Banking and Commerce.

Walters, R. (2016). Cyber Attacks on U.S. Companies in 2016. The Heritage Foundation.

Wiener, G. (2018). Cyberterrorism and ransomware attacks. New York: Greenhaven Publishing.