Cyber Threat

If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in

every battle. – sun tzu

in the last few decades, the world's most valuable resource has been oil and that had greatly improved the economy of

oil-producing countries through revenues, aiding job creation and strengthening international bonds but today the world is looking for alternatives to fossil fuel and adopting renewable sources of energy like wind and solar. Now the world's most valuable resource is data, be it raw or refined. Data holds priceless details and information about an individual, organization, competitor and national government. Hence the quote "data is the new oil". Just as challenges like oil spillage and gas flaring occurs in

the oil and gas sector, there are certain challenges facing the digital world as well. The most challenging being data protection and privacy.

Cybercrime is a global problem that is almost as old as the internet itself. It poses a threat to individual's personal data and identity and even more threat to large corporations, governments, and institutions worldwide as single cyber-attack could send an organization into oblivion.Now with technology changing so fast, cybercrime and cyber-attacks are becoming more sophisticated than ever before with malicious hackers forming crime rings and creating stronger security-proof tools and techniques. These

cybercriminals attack individuals for different reasons be it for personal gain, to sell trade secret to competitors, protest

against the government actions or inactions or just for the fun of it and that's where cybersecurity comes in but before

going into cybersecurity, we need to understand what cyberthreats are.

What is cyber threat

a cyber threat is a malicious action attempted or carried out against an individual, government or organization in order to steal, damage, manipulate data or utilize the resources of such body in carrying out more attacks. Sources of cyber threats like any kind of attack, there is always a motive; either to settle old scores or for personal gains. Some of the most common sources of cyber-attacks are:

 disgruntled employee (insider threat):

 cyber-attacks that originates from an insider are far more devastating and severe as the attacker always know a lot about the internal operations of the organization. An employee with opinions or perceptions different from that of the organization can go rogue, attack the organization from the inside and sell trade secrets to competitors. The story of christopher grupe is a good example to cite. Talking about the danger of a disgruntled employee, grupe was a systems administrator for the canadian pacific railway (CPR). In december 2015, he was suspended for subordination and when he returned to work, was informed he's been fired, effective immediately. Convincing the boss to let him resign instead, he used the time frame to access the company's networks, delete essential files and removed some admins' accounts and changed the password of others. After he was gone, the network began acting erratically, and system admins found out they have been locked out and unable to attempt repairs. They eventually got in by rebooting and grupe got a year in prison.

 Terrorists/hacktivist:

sometimes, cyber-attacks originate from terrorist groups, rebels or hacktivist who hack government facilities and public infrastructures such as power grids, power plants and websites to protest against certain action by the government and as a result persuade the government to do their bidding. A case study similar to this is that of 18-year-old kane gamble. By simple social

engineering, gamble gained access to data of top us intelligent officials including then-chief of the CIA, john brennan; then-director of national intelligence, james clapper; and obama's deputy national security adviser, avril haines. Gamble was sentenced to two years in prison by a UK court. The judge said gamble engaged in "politically motivated cyber terrorism" and this is just one of many cases of cyber hacktivism.

Cyber Crime groups:  

These are organized cyber groups  who hack for the financial benefit alone. These are the ones  who majorly attack banks and other financial institutions.  This group is also responsible for conniving with internet  fraudsters in scamming individuals, performing identity  theft and swindling companies.  Comment Crew is a Chinese hacking group, also known as  the Shanghai Group. Many believe they’re responsible for a  number of China’s alleged cyber-attacks since 2006. One of  their biggest, although not so well-known, successful  hacking attempt was on the company Coca-Cola. They sent  a malicious email from what looked like Coca-Cola’s CEO to  the company’s deputy president. Once opened, malware  smoothly downloaded onto his computer. Thus, giving the  hackers full access to everything he typed, through the  installation of a keystroke logger. The hackers had access to  sensitive files for a whole month before the FBI informed  Coca-Cola of the breach. 

Competitors: 

 Competition may get so bitter that a  company may launch a cyber-attack against a rival  company, not necessary to kick them out of business but to  either steal product blueprints or organizational secrets so  as to have the upper hand in the market.  A lot more was going on when Dejan Karabasevic left his job  at clean-energy company AMSC to work for a Chinese wind-  turbine company Sinovel. While at AMSC, Karabasevic has  had access to company’s proprietary technology for wind  turbine efficiency. Karabasevic didn’t just got a job offer  from Sinovel, he was recruited by the company which was  one of AMSC’s largest customers. He was asked to bring the  software with him and when he left, he had secretly  downloaded the code to an offsite computer. After  implementing the code, Sinovel retrofitted its wind turbines  with it, thereby saving itself $800 million price tag which  would have otherwise been charged by AMSC. The theft was  later detected and the estimated loss was more than $1  billion in shareholder equity and almost 700 jobs.      

National Governments:  

The act of a government  launching a cyber-attack against the facilities of another  government is referred to as cyber warfare. This could be as  a result of a government finding the policies or actions of  another government threatening. A good example of such  cyber-attack is the Iran's Nuclear Centrifuge sabotage by the  Stuxnet malware.  

Effects of Cyber Attacks  

There are many effects that cyber-attacks have on  individuals, organizations and government bodies. Some  may be harmless while most are life threatening.       

Psychological:  

One of the effects of a cyber-attack is that  it leaves the victim psychologically imbalanced and  exasperated. For instance, an individual whose bank  account was hacked and had his credit card used in the  purchase of firearms on the dark web. Apart from the  financial crises, he could also be arrested if the transactions  are traced back to his account.  Another scenario is an individual having his/her identity  stolen either by being impersonated or as a result of one of  his/her social media accounts being hacked. This clone  could use the victim's identity for malicious purposes such  as tricking the victim's friends into making fund transfers to  his account or posting socially unacceptable messages.       

Economic:  

The economic effects of cyber-attacks are  always devastating either for individual, financial  institutions or government. In late 2013, a large retailer  store, Target, sustained a massive cyber-attack that led to  the loss of almost 70 million customers' credit card  information and other data. The aftermath was costly. On  the day it went public with news of the breach, Target lost  US$ 890 million in market value. The firm subsequently  spent $100 million on improvements to its IT system and  other tech upgrades. This doesn't include that fact that  companies that get attacked faces sanctions by the  government and are also fined as a result of the attack.  When government infrastructures are attacked then it's not  always business as usual as the effects are seen on the stock  market as well as in the economic situation of the nation.  

Reputation: 

Trust is hard to earn, but easy to lose. When a  financial establishment gets attacked then there is a high  probability of it loosing not just its customers but also its  reputation and reliability, and for this reason, most  cyberattacks and data breaches are not reported and are  only known by the concerned party.