As the Cyberwar Escalates, Let's Not Forget We're in One
Unlike a traditional war, the conflict plays out over decades and impacts every human yet escapes the grasp of a myopic society robotically staring at screens never questioning the security of those very screens.
Should a few pagers and walkie-talkies exploding on the other end of the planet give pause to our halcyon life?
Could the device you're holding in your hand explode?
Not because of a product defect.
We have lawyers for that.
Is it even remotely possible for perpetrators to pull off a horrific cyber 9/11 without ever setting foot in the country?
In cybersecurity parlance, this is a supply chain attack.
Israel did not attack Hezbollah directly.
Israel created pager and walkie-talkie shell companies to export compromised devices across the Lebanese border and ultimately into the hands of Hezbollah operatives.
For a successful attack, the devices operate normally until the boom command is issued.
Embedded in the pagers is a small software that lies dormant, waiting for an instruction from a central commander.
That's how thousands and pagers can explode at the same time wreaking chaos on a small war-torn country.
The dormant and hidden software is called a Bot.
Before now, hundreds of thousands of bots were used to suffocate websites and servers with floods of bogus traffic.
Although the impact of a Bot attack can be unsettling, what Israel has built is devastating. Now Bots can be centrally commanded to explode, and no Israeli operative crossed the border.
Hezbollah, backed by Iran, has vowed a response to the attacks.
Iran is considered to have some of the better cyber capabilities, along with Russia, China, the United States, and of course Israel.
Cyber is different from other forms of warfare because a weapon even post deployment can be replicated. The techniques and the software aren't difficult to replicate.
Furthermore, the response does not require large capital expenditures or a large workforce.
They need a small group of sophisticated, experienced, and well trained and patriotic cybersecurity professionals.
Iran has proven that they have that.
It will take Iran time, perhaps a few years, to write the bot software, and embed it into an internet facing communications device, and manufacture them.
The world will then have two countries with this new weapon, remote exploding devices, Iran and Israel.
Unlike ransomware which is deployed from countries where America has no extradition, Remote Exploding Devices will be deployed by our allies and our enemies.
This is the new arms race and there is nothing that the United Nations or a coalition of countries can do to prevent its proliferation.
In some ways, the Israeli attacks were unsophisticated.
After all, who in today’s world uses pagers and walkie talkies?
The next innovation is to compromise the factories of high usage internet facing devices. These devices are called the Internet of Things (IoT) and represent over half of the devices on the internet globally.
Internet of Things is exploding (pun intended) and will soon represent 80% of all the devices on the internet, and none of it is secure.
These devices include televisions, thermostats, doorbells, surveillance cameras, routers, cable modems, but there is so much more on the IoT roadmap.
The factories that produce IoT devices are located primarily in two countries far from the United States: China and Taiwan.
These companies caught up in the Internet of Things frenzy, are pounding out these devices at high volume and low prices.
In China, little to no attention is paid to cyber security and/or perimeter security.
For example, in September 2023, millions of made-in-China Android TV devices were preloaded with bot capabilities.
These devices skated through customs and are in our country.
There is now no way to identify these devices to remove the software other than broad non-actionable alerts from the government.
America is the dominant country for IoT devices.
Estimates range from 42% to 50% of the global IoT production goes to the United States. These devices originate in insecure factories in the Far East, placed on equally unsecure boats and land in the United States to points unknown.
Hezbollah had the pagers and walkie-talkies in their possession for roughly a year before the big boom.
So is it possible that your cell phone will explode in your hand or your pocket?
Probably not.
Things are not yet to that point of sophistication. What we can say with certainty is that we place an unfounded trust in the security of the devices we use daily, just like Hezbollah did.
Rob Cheng is the CEO and founder of PC Matic, a cybersecurity company, best known as the only antivirus made in America. PC Matic is the sponsor of Newsmax’s cybersecurity weekly show. Cheng believes that the nation’s cybersecurity can be solved and an advocate for cyber prevention and citizen privacy. Read more of Rob Cheng's reports — Here.
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