Cyberattacks: Danger to the real world
Can you imagine waking up in the morning and figuring out that your Facebook account
has been hacked and messages with unpleasant content have been sent to all your friends? Or
that you are on the subway, the light suddenly turns off and the train stops abruptly? Or that you
came to work, but all your saved files were deleted and all the information was lost? Or that you
want to relax and watch a movie on the internet, but your computer somehow behaves weirdly
and loads hundreds of tabs per minute, without responding to any buttons, so you can do nothing
with it? What would you do if any of these situations happened to you? Although people trust
these fascinating machines without sometimes knowing how they work, computers were created
to spy, they are uniquely useful for - and vulnerable to - hacking. As electrical devices tend to be
more central to people’s lives, the topic of hacking attacks becomes increasingly important.
Cyberattacks are more important to people’s lives than some think because hackers’ actions can
seriously affect the country's government and infrastructure, personal information of users, and
people’s living conditions.
According to the book “Investigating A Cyber Attack”, cyber attack is any attack on a
computer system (Rooney 10). Hackers, people who use programming skills to break into
computer networks illegally, don’t pursue a certain goal and attack randomly but their actions
can seriously damage computer systems, steal information and distribute viruses or worms. Virus
is disruptive or destructive software that spreads between networked computers (Rooney 10).
One of the reasons why cyberattacks are dangerous is that they can threaten the country’s
military, infrastructure and cause panic among the population. Cyberattacks, or hacking attacks,
can reveal a country's military plans and disrupt secret operations. As it was a case in Iraq,
hackers easily gained access to US military drones. They did it using only basic equipment
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endangering a US military operation in Iraq. However, it is not impossible to imagine that
hackers could get access to significant servers and computer-guided bombs. This nightmare
scenario could lead to unpredictable consequences. Hacking attacks are more than just a threat to
military systems as on drones in Iraq. Gary McKinnon, a British citizen, hacked a minimum
ninety Pentagon computers in 2001. He did it with an ordinary computer but damaged valuable
information. His actions were worth about $700,000 to restore hacked files (Berger).
Likewise, hackers’ actions could be even more destructive than the cases mentioned
above. They can damage the country's infrastructure plans. Stuxnet is a notable example of it. It
was a malicious computer worm that was supposed to tell centrifuges for uranium enrichment to
spin so quickly that they could easily break. This computer virus seriously affected Iranian
infrastructural plans. Though Iranian nuclear facilities had to be stopped, it’s not impossible to
imagine that hackers could send more dangerous signals leading to nuclear explosion which in
term would cause thousands of people’s deaths. Therefore, it was not pointless when the New
York Times reported that Stuxnet is “The first attack on critical industrial infrastructure that sits
at the foundation of modern economies” ("Malware Hits Computerized").
Hackers’ actions can also cause panic among people. This may not sound significant but
it can lead to unpredictable consequences, e.g. distrust of the government. One example of these
actions is Denial of Service attack, or DoS. Techniques of such attacks cause computers to make
lots of requests at the same time. This leads to overloading of the computer system so users can’t
get access to data or do operations they want ("Cyber Warfare"). Though some critics don’t
believe in the danger of DoS attacks saying, the topic on the cyberattacks “is fraught with
exaggeration, misinformation, and alarmism” (Miller), it can cause fear among the country’s
population as it was in South Korea. Experts reported that several tens of thousands computers
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were affected by DoS attacks which made systems browse lots of websites. This led to
“overloading strategically important South Korean servers” (Berger). If coordinated to hit the
right websites at the right time, this could easily cause militarily important servers to crash over
and over again. DoS attacks can also bring serious money damage if targeted on business
companies. This happened to PayPal when an anonymous person launched such an attack. It cost
the company about $5.5 million to recover the consequences of the attack (DiLascio).
Cyberattacks are also dangerous because they encroach on people's social lives. Hackers
can steal personal information of users even if users think they are protected very well.
Nowadays smart devices firmly entered people’s lives and became omnipresent in homes and
offices. Because of that many experts, such as Bruce Schneier, report that there will be very little
private life ("Counterpoint: The Internet”). Moreover, users don’t always know what amount of
information can be stolen and what hackers can do with it. Hackers can sell the stolen data to
companies or other people that can affect a person's reputation. Hackers can even blackmail the
victims of their attacks extorting great amounts of money.
Cyberattacks are also dangerous in that they can directly affect people’s banking
operations. It may seem difficult but it’s often very easy to steal credit card information such as
card number, personal data, and, the most important, money. Since such attacks are easy to carry
out, there are lots and lots of examples of hacked accounts. According to the database article
“Cyberattacks to steal customer’s information”, “Between July and October 2013, the credit card
information of 350,000 Neiman Marcus customers was stolen, and more than 9,000 of the credit
cards have been used fraudulently since the attack” (Walters). As it can be seen, the amount of
hacked accounts is really huge. Moreover, similar situations are not unusual. They happen every
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day, every hour, every minute across the world. Though there are a lot of hackers’ victims, it is
possible that the number can be even bigger but just not made public.
Similarly, cyberattacks impact domestic and international politics. It has a direct effect on
real life events that are very important for ordinary people. For example, hackers often integrate
cyberattacks with private data which is often false. The 2017 French presidential election is a
good example of it. As The Guardian reports, “Tens of thousands of internal emails and other
documents, some said to be false, were released online overnight on Friday as the midnight
deadline to halt campaigning passed” ("Emmanuel Macron's Campaign”). Though the intended
goal of the attack was not achieved, some compromised information was revealed by the
hackers’ actions which undermined the credibility of Macron’s political party.
Cyberattacks can also cause negative impacts on people’s living conditions. Hackers can
get access to automated systems that are, not surprisingly, powered by computers. As computers
around the world become more and more interconnected, it is easier for hackers to attack them
and spread viruses and worms. Once access to one computer is gained, other computers become
unprotected in an instant. After hacking the computers, attackers have full control on automated
systems, such as freight and passenger trains, airplanes, self-driving cars, spacecrafts and so on.
How many casualties this attack will bring is unpredictable.
Cyberattacks are really dangerous when hackers threaten essential for people’s lives
resources, such as water or electricity. Some critics say that “concerns about attacks on physical
infrastructure are baseless” (Miller). However, in recent decades, energy, water and other
systems became the main aims for attackers since it’s the easiest way to destroy an entire nation.
In a possible scenario getting control over the automated systems could lead to derailing the
trains with dangerous chemicals and contaminating water supplies. What would happen if people
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didn’t have the most necessary thing for their organisms, such as water? Moreover, poisonous
water can bring epidemics and thousands of people’s deaths. It’s not unreasonable that Barack
Obama in a 2013 executive order said about cyberattacks that they are "one of the most serious
national security challenges we must confront" ("Hackers Targeting”).
The importance of cyber attacks in people’s lives is greater than some consider.
Cyberattacks are a real threat to the military powers of states, factories and plants, and
government system. Personal information and people’s social lives are also popular targets of
hackers’ attacks. Moreover, automated systems controlled by computers and essential supplies,
such as water and electricity, are in danger as well if they are hacked by attackers. What is clear
is that it is becoming harder and harder to keep secrets in the modern world. Examples are those
people whose credit card information has been sold on the Dark Web, or the teenagers who
realise their social media trail of embarrassing pictures is harder to erase than they thought, or
the twenty one million people affected by the OPM breach, or the NSA after Edward Snowden.
It is now easier than ever for information to be stolen and leaked. That might sound abstract, but
in 2012, US computers were the target of nearly 9 million malware attacks. And who knows how
big this number is now.
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Works Cited
Berger, Adam. "Counterpoint: Cyberwarfare Is an Increasingly Serious Threat That Must Be
Addressed." Points of View: Cyberwarfare, Dec. 2018, p. 1. EBSCOhost,
search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=pwh&AN=84782603&site=povlive&scope=site. Accessed 28 January 2020
Boone, Jeb. "Cyberattacks Could Result in Damage Similar to Natural Disasters." Cybercrime,
edited by Noël Merino, Greenhaven Press, 2016. Current Controversies. Gale In Context:
Opposing Viewpoints,
https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/EJ3010976208/OVIC?u=mnkcathedral&sid=OVIC&xid=
a68c67ca. Accessed 29 Jan. 2020. Originally published as "How Hackers Could
Annihilate US Utilities and Unleash Havoc on Infrastructure," GlobalPost, 22 May 2013.
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"Counterpoint: The Internet of Things Endangers the Physical World." Points of View: Internet
of Things, Oct. 2019, p. 1. EBSCOhost,
search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=pwh&AN=141181098&site=povlive&scope=site. Accessed 28 January 2020
DiLascio, Tracey M. "Counterpoint: Hacktivists Engage in Criminal Behavior That Is Dangerous
and Should Be Punished." Points of View: Hacktivism, Mar. 2017, p. 1. EBSCOhost,
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Musil, Steven. "Hackers Targeting US Nuclear Power Plants, Report Finds." CNET, 6 July 2017,
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Richmond, Riva. "Malware Hits Computerized Industrial Equipment." The New York Times, 24
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Rooney, Anne. Computer Science and IT: Investigating a Cyber Attack. Chicago, Heinemann
Library, 2014.
Townsend, Caleb. "Cyber Warfare: Modern Front-lines." United States Cybersecurity Magazine,
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Walters, Riley. "Cyberattacks to Steal Customer Information Are a Serious Problem."
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Companies in 2014,", 27 Oct. 2014.
Willsher, Kim, and Jon Henley. "Emmanuel Macron's Campaign Hacked on Eve of French
Election." The Guardian, 6 May 2017,
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