The world cries, "I am, I said!"..Is anyone really listening?

In our last post, we noted Vice-president Harris’ comment on the need to confront corruption in Central America, if any order and stability were to be achieved in the struggle to manage, limit and control undocumented immigration into the U.S. The very fact that she had to confront the President of Guatemala on his alleged complicity in whatever forms of corruption, in a public press conference, is not only shocking in itself; it is also an index on the complexity and the range of how corruption is eroding much public confidence, in many quarters.

Cyber hacking of Colonial Pipeline, while interrupted and effectively curtailed, nevertheless demonstrates a clear link between private agents and public states, in that case, likely Russia. However, the incidence of cyber crime has grown so rapidly and seemingly, without much in the way of impediments, cautions, sanctions or push-back.

According to Marija Lazic writing on the website, Legaljobs.io, “Cyber crime statistics 2019 show that the majority (72%) of cybersecurity breaches in 2019 were financially motivated and were instigated by cyber criminals looking for financial gains. However, 26% of cybercrimes were motivated by intentions traced to espionage and other such reasons…..Hackers attack people worldwide roughly everyhalf a minute, This translates to a cybercrime being committed on an average of 2,244 times per day, according to internet security statistics. Smaller organizations (1-250 employees) have the highest targets malicious email rate at 1 in 323…In the last 5 years, over 500 million online gamers have had their data comprised….Cryptomining is the main target area for 90% of remote code execution attacks. Remote code execution attacks have been very prevalent recently, especially with cryptomining becoming so popular. Remote code execution is a system by which an attacker exploits vulnerabilities in web applications, allowing them to run their own code on the applications and giving them controls over their server and system that possesses the weakness….At present, the US has the highest rate of cyber crime, over 23.6% more than any other country, cyber crime statistics suggest.

Andra Saharia, writing in comparitech.com, June 11, 2021, writes this:

With global cybercrime damages predicted to cost up to $10.5 trillion annually by 2025, not getting caught in the landslide is a matter of taking in the right information and acting on it quickly….With the threat ulandscape always changing, it’s important to understand how cyber attacks are evolving and which  security controls and types of training work. There were 137.7 million new malware samples in 2020  (AV-Test),  a slight reduction from the 1244.91 samples in 2019. As of June 2021, there have been 92.45 million new samples, so we may will see a new high before the end of the year. In 2019, 93.6% of malware observed was polymorphic, meaning it has the ability to constantly change its code to evade detection (2020 Webroot Threat Report). Almost 50% of business PCs and 53% of consumer Pcs that got infected once were re-infected within the same year (2021 Webroot Threat Report). A 2007 study found that malicious hackers were previously attacking computers and networks at a rate of one attack every 39 seconds. The Internet Complaint Center’s 2020 report found that there were 465,177 reported incidents that year, which works out at one successful attack every 1.12 seconds. Notable this doesn’t account for attempted attacks or those that went unreported. (University of Maryland)…86.2% of surveyed organizations were affected by a successful cyberattack. (CyberEdge Group 2021 Cyberthreat Defense Report)…Columbia were the hardest-hit country by cyberattacks in 2019, with 93.9% of all surveyed companies being compromised at least once last year (CyberEdge 2021 Cyberthreart Defense Report). Their list of countries by percent of surveyed companies:

China…………………………..91.5%

Germany………………………91.5%

Mexico……………………….90.6%

Spain………………………….89.8%

USA…………………………..89.7%

Saudi Arabia………………….89.4%

Italy…………………………...87.8%

Singapore…………………….85.7%

Canada……………………….85.7%

Brazil……………………….  85.3%

South Africa…………………83.7%

France……………………….82.2%

Turkey………………………82.0%

Australia…………………….81.6%

Japan………………………..80.9%

UK………………………….71.1%

Anyone who thinks this is not a worldwide pandemic of a different character, is likely asleep under a rock. And, anyone who thinks this is not having an impact, not only on those specific targets, but on the state/ondition of the global body politic as well, is also comatose.

This report goes on:

Ransomware infection rates saw a huge increase in 2020, largely due to the increased, importance of online learning and teleworking platforms. US ramsomeware attacks cost an estimated $915 million in 2020 (Emisoft). Almost 200 million ransomeware attacks occurred in the first nine months of 2020 representing a large increase over the previous year. (SonicWall). A ransomeware attack in early 2020 on the New Orleans city government cost the city upwards of $7 million (SC Magazine). In Frbryary 2020, a ransomeware attack cost Denmark-based company ISS upwards of $50 million (GlobalNewswire). Since 2016, a total of 172 ransomeware attacks have cost the US healthcare organizations $21 billion. (Comparitech)….Ransomeware attacks can be extremely costly. For example, an attack involving the NotPetya ransomeware cost shipping firm Maersk more than $200 million. In 2021, the average global cost to remediate a ransomeware attack rose to $1.5 million, more than double the previous year’s average ($761,106) (Sophos The State of Ransomeware 2021). Organizations in India, Austria, and the US are most likely8 to be hit by ransomeware attacks, In India, the prevalence is expecially high with 68% of organizations dealing with ransomeware. Austria has the next highest rate at 57%. (Sophos The State of Ransomeware 2021)…Iran, Algeria and Bangladesh top the list of countries attacked by mobile ransomeware in terms of share of users (Kaspersky Labs). …What makes the ransomeware problem worse is that nation-states are involved. Investigations proved that the WannaCry and NotPetya ransomeware attack campaigns were orchestrated by nation-state actors. They may have started in 2017, but their effect continued into 2020. The objective was to destroy information or cause distractions rather than to derive financial benefits. Datto’s Global State of the Channel Ransomeware Report 2020 shows that ransomeware is still a huge cause for concern for any type of organization, particularly SMBs.

There are concepts, agencies, actors and complications in these reports that previously were never even included in a reasonably comprehensive awareness of the ‘state of the world’ only a few months ago. The capacity of technology both to change and to find its way into the hands of the most nefarious actors, both state and private, and some various hybrids of those two, and then to be deployed for a variety of purposes, both financial profit and political “profit” (disinformation, democratic deconstruction, propaganda victories, electoral transformation, and the perception of election fraud, thereby destabilizing public confidence in those election systems) leaves the world gasping for breath, not to mention co-ordinated and collaborative ways and means to address these new issues.

By comparison, global warming and climate change seem relatively simple both to comprehend and hopefully therefore to fix, naturally with multiple state and private actors compliance. “Technocrime”, however, is a horse of a far different colour. And the complicity of both public/state and private/profit driven actors, all of them seemingly hidden behind veils and vaults and complicity of their political operatives, seemingly immune to legitimate world legal action to contain, and to bring to heel, renders world leaders with another potentially existential threat. Pointing to polluters, like coal-fired generators, or like oil refineries, or like manufacturing plants that require coal for energy….this is relatively  easy when compared with the virtually archeological-criminal investigative processes that are needed to root out cybercrime.

Needless to say, also, the life paths of those most dispossessed, in all countries, will latch onto whatever opportunities present themselves, whether legitimate and in the public interest or not, in order to address immediate personal needs. Whether that means sending your children into the unknown darkness of a trek to the Mexican/American border, or whether that means linking with a state actor in a deliberate social and political engineering project dedicated to undermine successful business operations or governments that support those operations, does not really matter. While the second window requires some basic techno-skills, as opposed to the former, the access to those skills is now so ubiquitous and low-cost, that many have already been drawn into that potentially career sector.

Destabilizing, deconstruction, undermining, subterfuge, deception, denial, lies….these are all the methods of what Chinese writer, Sun Tzu, called in his famous book The Art of War:

“All warfare is based on deception,.Hence when able to attack we must seem unable. When using our forces we must seem inactive. When we are near, we make the enemy believe we are far away. When we are far away we must make the enemy believe we are near.”

“Appear weak when you are strong, and strong when you are weak.”

“If he is superior in strength, evade him.”

“Attack him where he is unprepared. Appear where you are not expected.”

“The general who loses a battle makes few calculations beforehand.”

“There is no instance of a country having benefitted from prolonged warfare.”

“A wise general makes a point of foraging on the enemy. One cartload of the enemy’s provisions is equivalent to twenty of one’s own”

“Supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy’s resistance without fighting”

It would seem so obvious, not to mention dangerous, that many of the world’s current actors are not only steeped in the Sun Tzu doctrine of war, but are also committed to the fullest engagement in deploying those strategies. When legendary basketball coach, Bobby Knight held coaching clinics (one specifically at the University of Toronto, in 1967), he was not engaged in a propaganda campaign to tutor warriors for either his homeland or the potential warriors of his neighbour, Canada. He was engaged in a process of helping design, display and then teach some physical and mental manoeuvres that would help then coaches to develop more skilled players. Fakes, eye movements, deceptive physical clues…these were the tactics he was illustrating.

Today, however, the game of geopolitics has changed, away from hard iron metal tanks, carriers, fighter-jets and even radar screens. Now we see joy-sticks controlling those giants, leaving human direct engagement in the trash-bin of history, at least in Afghanistan. We are also witnessing an immediate tsunami of technological developments that governments, and therefore courts and universities and colleges are rushing to catch up to even understanding their potential impact.

In the hands of people willing to do anything, literally anything, in order to meet immediate and perceived serious needs, instruments of the new war can and will easily slide into a deep dark web. There is considerable evidence that this has already happened, and will continue unabated into the foreseeable future.

Not only are we, collectively, at least in the west, unprepared for the next few years of cybercrime; we are also unprepared for the next pandemic. We are also unprepared for the next colonization of space, as well as the attempted colonization of the Arctic, both of which will rely on both human and cyber technology. And we seem to be looking through what film-makers call a gauze lens when attempting to do reconnaissance on the horizon of our shared future.

Does anyone think we can take those gauze lenses off our eyes? Does anyone believe that current leaders are being fully transparent with what they know about current and future threats? Does anyone think or believe that current ways of operating, at the state level, will be adequate to face the threats of tomorrow….not a decade away but this year and next?

Turbulence, like desperation, breeds more of its own. In the midst of forces that bode well for the illicit, the criminal, the human and drug traffickers, the propagandists and the dictators and their sycophantic slime, it is not surprising that many are seeking mental health support, social community, and even spiritual comfort of a non-institutional nature and source.

I am I said, was a cry coming from the voice of Neil Diamond back in the 1970’s as an existential plea for recognition of the individual. Today, the whole world, collectively and individually, is uttering that cry.

Is anyone really listening?