2 or more AMEN to all your prayers.
https://www.wired.com/story/biggest-cybersecurity-crises-2019-so-far/
SIX MONTHS OF 2019 are on the books already, and certainly there have been six months’ worth of data breaches, supply chain manipulations, state-backed hacking campaigns, and harbingers of cyberwar to show for it. But the hallmark of 2019, perhaps, is feeling like the worst is yet to come. Ransomware is an ever-growing threat, corporate and US government security is still a mess, and geopolitical tensions are rising worldwide.
Before we see what the future holds, though, let’s recap some of the major cybersecurity incidents that have cropped up so far this year.
US Customs and Border Protection Contractor Perceptics
In May, a surveillance contractor for Customs and Border Protection suffered a breach and hackers stole photos of travelers and license plates related to about 100,000 people. The Tennessee-based contractor, a longtime CBP affiliate known as Perceptics, also lost detailed information about its surveillance hardware and how CBP implements it at multiple US ports of entry. The Perceptics breach was first reported by The Register, and CBP officials later disclosed the incident to the Washington Post. Though CBP was hesitant at first to admit that Perceptics was the contractor that had suffered the breach, the agency sent a Microsoft Word document to the Post titled “CBP Perceptics Public Statement” in its initial response. Days later, hackers posted the stolen Perceptics data to the dark web. On Tuesday, CBP suspended Perceptics from federal contracting, though it did not say why.
LILY HAY NEWMAN COVERS INFORMATION SECURITY, DIGITAL PRIVACY, AND HACKING FOR WIRED.
CBP has spent the past two decades ramping up its use of border surveillance technologies, and there appears to be no end in sight. For example, the agency wants facial recognition scans to be standard in the top 20 US airports by 2021. But civil rights and privacy advocates say that these aggressive initiatives pose a danger to US citizens and the global community in general. The Perceptics incident is seen as a clear example of those risks. As Jeramie Scott, senior counsel at the Electronic Privacy Information Center, told WIRED in June, “The agency simply should not collect this sensitive personal information if it cannot safeguard it.”
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One to Watch: Iran
Ever since President Donald Trump withdrew the United States from the 2015 Iranian nuclear agreement last year, international relations and cybersecurity experts have been warning that the move could escalate tensions between the two countries, particularly in cyberspace. This appeared to hold true in the second half of 2018, and the first six months of 2019 have borne even more marked escalations. Iranian hackers have ramped up campaigns around the world, and particularly against US targets, as the two countries clash more openly in the physical world.
June, in particular, saw tensions continue to rise with a series of incidents in the Middle East. On June 13, two fuel tankers were attacked in the Gulf of Oman. The US blamed Iran, and also accused Iranians of attempting to shoot down a US drone. One week later, Iran succeeded in shooting down an unmanned surveillance drone, which it claimed had entered Iranian airspace. Trump considered then ultimately aborted a kinetic strike in response to the provocation, but US Cyber Command was approved to launch a damaging cyberattack against Iran’s rocket and missile launch control systems, however. The hack reportedly took weeks or months for Cyber Command to design and orchestrate. Meanwhile, Iran has been digitally clapping back at the US. The question now is whether cyberstrikes can really be used as an alternative to kinetic conflict—as some war scholars have proposed—or whether they only serve to escalate real-world combat.