We are under attack

Cyber police estimate that over 200,000 organisations and 150 countries were affected.

Today this news item has disappeared from our traditional sources of information.

But the threat remains.

The philosopher Jean Baudrillard several decades ago warned that the virtual shapes our existence in this postmodern world.

We fashion our lives on images gleaned from the media and the Web. In fact, what he calls “the simulacrum,” which is an image created by the media, dictates our reality. In today’s world, the waves of information that assail us on a daily basis determine our actions, our priorities and our lifestyles.

Nothing has value in and of itself.

The attack last week brought home how completely tied we are to this virtual world. Even the ransom demanded by the hijackers was virtual.

The cyber criminals, who froze data worldwide, demanded a ransom in the digital currency bitcoin for its release.

The origin of the virus WannaCry that created fear and confusion worldwide only ten days ago, is not known. It is, as most of us know, almost impossible to find the origin of any computer virus. Last week a file purportedly sent by a financial institution in St Augustine infected my Gmail. The individual from whose account the email was apparently sent, was not at work on the day.

The use of ransomware, which enabled the virus called WannaCry, is not a new form of terrorism, oddly enough.

There have been cyberattacks in the past.

According to experts, global ransomware costs businesses approximately US$1 billion a year at the present time and this has been increasing over the past few years.

Much of this is unknown to the public at large. Institutions and corporate business pay up quietly and have their data released.

This last attack was different in that so many public institutions were the victims.

According to experts, the effects were not as horrific as it might have been, and comparatively small sums were paid out in ransom, apparently totalling only about $60,000.

What is different in this instance is the fear voiced by many that this attack was only a reconnaissance and that there are more virulent attacks to come.

The attackers use very comprehensive and sophisticated cyber technology developed by American intelligence and stolen from them. Cyber experts fear that this latest act of terrorism is a testing of the waters for a much more serious attack using a worm that spreads itself, since new cyber-weaponised malware may not need any human intervention.

In another story last week, the EU fined Facebook 110 million euro for telling lies. FB had said after their purchase of WhatsApp in 2014 “that it was not technically possible to automatically link WhatsApp user data with Facebook profiles but this later transpired to be incorrect.” Given the scale of users, the opportunity to sell personal information to advertisers is truly awesome.

So what exactly can we keep from being stolen, sold or hijacked or disseminated? How does one fully stop the real threat of one’s personal information or contact details going places one does not want them to go? After all, we shop online, bank online, and we put out so much of our personal lives on Facebook and Twitter and through emails.

In the face of a possible, even more comprehensive attack on our virtual existence, experts will obviously think of ways of securing our information. But suppose Baudrillard to be right and that our daily lives and values have become so irrevocably i n t e r - t w i n e d with this v i r t u a l w o r l d that we c a n n o t d i s e n - t a n g l e ourselves — what then?