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I've always had concerns for America's vulnerability to a cyber attack from their enemies that shuts down critical infrastructure. On March 29th, a hobbyist that was trouble shooting an issue with the internet discovered an attempt to shut down the entire system with malware. How could this possibly be done? Well, the Economist reported that it has been well known by security experts that the internet teeters on one piece of integrating software that has been maintained by hobbyists. The internet supports the operations of government and commercial parties. Aside from the potential to compromise government classified information, while that kind of compromise is significant, it does not come close to the damage a massive internet outage on commercial interests would have on the trillions of dollars transacted daily by companies and banks.
The Russian SVR, Russia’s foreign-intelligence service, which in 2019-20 also compromised SolarWinds Orion network-management software to gain extensive access to American government networks, is the prime suspect. Shocking, right? The guy that tracked this down is a Microsoft Engineer but he didn't do this on contract from the US Government or on company time. He did it on his own time. He's a hobbyist.
The Economist article laying out the story is paywalled. It's some scary shit. You may find the article has been released for publication in other news feeds.
The Russian SVR, Russia’s foreign-intelligence service, which in 2019-20 also compromised SolarWinds Orion network-management software to gain extensive access to American government networks, is the prime suspect. Shocking, right? The guy that tracked this down is a Microsoft Engineer but he didn't do this on contract from the US Government or on company time. He did it on his own time. He's a hobbyist.
The Economist article laying out the story is paywalled. It's some scary shit. You may find the article has been released for publication in other news feeds.
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