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Government Created The Hacking Epidemic, They Aren’t The Solution
The “WannaCry” Malware attack that spooled out over the end of last week and into the weekend, implicates two sides of this problem. The government created the new hacking epidemic, yet are presenting themselves as a solution to it. Both of those “problems” should not be taken lightly either.
If this is the first time you’ve heard of “WannaCry”, you’ll be interested in knowing that the ransomware allegedly originated from vulnerabilities and infiltration tools developed by the National Security Agency (NSA). This little tidbit of information is largely ignored by government worshippers who seek an immediate solution caused by the government. Not only that, but the NSA had been hoarding and keeping secret from technology companies whose defenses they were breaching. All of this secrecy was to facilitate the NSA’s ability to engage in cyber espionage and to prevent technology companies from building defenses that would have inhibited government surveillance. But then, the NSA lost control of these infiltration tools and the government agency was publicly exposed by the hacker group known as the “Shadow Brokers” last month.
Yet, not many pointed the finger at the government, when it was entirely their fault for lying to and hacking into technology companies in the first place, and creating the tools with which to commit this type of cyber espionage.
So this WannaCry attack or something like it (and probably many more) was incoming, and attentive information technology specialists were aware [of] and hopefully prepared [for]. Microsoft had already released a patch to address the vulnerabilities. Except not everybody downloaded it.
The governments of the world should treat this attack as a wake-up call. They need to take a different approach and adhere in cyberspace to the same rules applied to weapons in the physical world. We need governments to consider the damage to civilians that comes from hoarding these vulnerabilities and the use of these exploits. This is one reason we called in February for a new “Digital Geneva Convention” to govern these issues, including a new requirement for governments to report vulnerabilities to vendors, rather than stockpile, sell, or exploit them.
Ironically, most Americans still clamor like sheep going to slaughter for more government intrusion in their lives. It is difficult to understand the mind of an American anymore. Instead of placing the blame squarely on the government’s shoulders for hoarding information and not telling Microsoft of the vulnerabilities it discovered after creating the tools to breach those vulnerabilities, the company will instead get the blame. Microsoft isn’t going around hacking into computers in the first place; that would be the US government.
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Contributed by Dawn Luger of The Daily Sheeple.
Dawn Luger is a staff writer and reporter for The Daily Sheeple. Wake the flock up – follow Dawn’s work at our Facebook or Twitter.
