Cybersecurity Posts

Every powerful technology creates new ways for things to go wrong. Cars enabled travel but also traffic deaths. Nuclear physics enabled power but also weapons. The internet enabled communication but also cybercrime.

In June 2017, NotPetya crossed the world in hours. One compromised update server belonging to a Ukrainian tax software vendor cascaded into more than $10 billion in damage. Maersk lost 49,000 laptops and roughly 1,000 applications and could not operate its shipping terminals for days—the company later reported that recovery was possible only because a single domain controller in Ghana had been offline during the attack, preserving the one uncorrupted copy of its directory.¹ Merck's manufacturing stopped. FedEx's European subsidiary was crippled.

The internet was built by people who knew each other.