Power outage and Internet Disruption is on many people’s minds right now because around the world Windows A malfunction has taken much of the infrastructure offline, grounding planes and including Sky News. TV Channels Broadcasting has stopped.
From banks and payments companies to airlines and train companies, they said they were experiencing delays and technical problems due to a botched software update by cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike.
This is something former Deputy Prime Minister Oliver Dowden warned regarding when he stressed the need for us all to think regarding our preparedness for long-term disruption during a cyber attack. While George Kurtz, founder and chief executive of cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, has made it clear that the outage was unlikely to be a cyber attack, it certainly got us thinking.
It also brings to mind the Netflix hit ‘Leave the World Be Behind’, which depicts the terrifying, devastated world in the immediate followingmath of an attack.
In the film, the first time anyone realizes there’s a problem is when they find that their cell phone signal is down, and their Wi-Fi is down, but the characters don’t know what to do until they find out that the attack is on. has started, a push notification appears on their TV screens.
In fact, the emergency alert system tested this April will be used in the UK. This will mean that our phones will ring, and we will receive advice and instructions on what to do in the event of a mass attack or severe weather, whether it’s staying indoors or moving to a safe place. .
The government’s annual preparedness plan, introduced by Dowden during Rishi Sonak’s tenure, recommended that people have alternative non-digital methods of radio, as well as backups in case of prolonged power outages. There are also power banks to run lights and appliances. Other experts say that everyone should have enough food and water for three to four days.
Such plans become pointless when you include bunkering capacity for 7 million citizens in the basements of apartment blocks in Swedish cities and in underground metro stations and some shopping malls.
Inside, there’s enough supplies for regarding a week and an emergency siren system in case of a deadly peacetime attack – known as ‘Hors Frederik’, Swedish on the first Monday of March, June, September and December. In cities, the test is conducted at exactly 3 pm.
Britain’s physical air raid siren network was also regularly tested in the 1970s but was withdrawn in the 1990s. However, reports say around 1,200 are still in use – and will be used if there is an immediate threat to nearby residents.
In the Netflix movie, another sign of a serious problem is that an oil tanker has run aground, due to a malfunction in the navigation system. Later, we see planes falling from the sky, reminiscent of the Y2K Millennium Bug scare, when people worried that computers might misinterpret the “00” in 2000 as 1900, which Some thought it would disrupt everything from navigation systems to power infrastructure.
It never happened, mostly because so many people worked behind the scenes, but there were still problems internationally when 15 nuclear reactors shut down, power outages in Hawaii, and government shutdowns in China and Hong Kong. Computers fail.
In August 2023, an air traffic control system failure in the UK grounded all flights, highlighting how much we rely on computer systems. Recently we have seen that even small errors can have wide-ranging effects.
Leo’s World Be Hidden to be released in November 2023 (Screen Grab Netflix)
The flight outage took several days to clear up as Britain’s air traffic control watchdog Nats tried to pinpoint the root cause of the outage. But at least it proved that there are enough early warning systems and backup plans to prevent planes from crashing in the air. As we see in the movie.
However, that doesn’t mean we should ignore the importance of our systems being interconnected – this dependency is much greater than when we were worried regarding the Millennium Bug.
About 15 years ago, the UK took a path with its National Cyber Security Strategy that prioritized that government computer systems must remain operational at all costs.
‘It was wrong in 2009 because we completely ignored the fact,’ says Leonette Nasbaker, then a senior intelligence officer at the UK’s Joint Intelligence Committee and who founded the Cabinet Office’s National Security Horizon Scanning Unit. Given that a large part of the economy was already virtual, and it was only going to increase.’
While Nasbecker left her post in 2010, she says that from an outsider’s perspective, not much has changed since then. ‘We didn’t go much further than that,’ she says.
However, Ciaran Martin, a professor of practice at the Blatnik School of Government and the first CEO of the UK’s National Cyber Security Center until August 2020, believes that such a large-scale cyber attack is still likely. not enough. ‘The chances of that happening without a broad and complex declaration of hostility are very, very, very low,’ he says.
In this photo taken on January 23, 2023 in Toulouse, southwestern France, screens showing the logos of Microsoft and OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, can be seen (AFP)
What we think of as national infrastructure, such as the National Grid, is relatively well protected and has been for decades.
The UK’s National Protective Security Authority (NPSA) has listed 13 sectors it considers critical, including energy, chemical and civil nuclear, as well as health, communications, food and water.
According to the NPSA, the 13 were selected because ‘a major adverse impact on the availability, integrity or provision of these essential services might result in significant loss of life.’
“However, if a piece of national infrastructure is a hard target, attackers will look for a soft target,” Nasbecker says. Communication is key, and she says: ‘The government has special agreements with specific providers to ensure that there is no failure in any one place.’
Outages include things that affect the general public, like your Internet connection and possibly your mobile service when people go out because they can’t use Wi-Fi. However, emergency services can still work – the government learned following the 7/7 terror attacks on London in 2005 that first responders cannot use the same network as the general public. Emergency services use a new system, called the Emergency Services Network, which is separate from the main public communications network.
Recently there has been a focus on landline phone services and in particular their analog value and use in cyber attack.
Traffic jams in central London on October 23, 2017 (AFP)
Alan Woodward, professor of cyber security at the University of Surrey, says: ‘We’re taking a step back by shutting down the old phone system, which was a separate network, operated separately and had a copper infrastructure.’
BT and other telephone providers are moving their services away from traditional copper wires to digital alternatives, powered by Voice over IP (VoIP) technology – the same technology used by Skype. is the basis. However, the phone company says it has plans in place to continue services in the event of a serious incident and is in regular communication with the government.
‘In the UK, one of the hidden advantages is that we have a number of network providers,’ says Woodward. While many service providers use the same physical network, there are many physical mobile networks.’
The same is true for banks, says Ciaran Martin, who all have backup plans in place in case of major cyber incidents. The goal is to ensure that the Services remain online. “Big banks and energy grids are basically designed so that if one fails, power can be taken from somewhere else,” he says.
Customers inspect Tesla’s Model 3 vehicle during an exhibition in Barcelona, Spain, November 2018 (AFP)
‘Besides the massive electromagnetic pulse, some infrastructure will continue to operate for ordinary users,’ says Woodward. Emergency generators will be activated, keeping essential systems online.’
One of the film’s most impressive scenes — at least on social media — sees Tesla’s self-driving electric vehicles hurtling down the streets. The sight raised the pulse of Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who immediately posted on X, formerly Twitter, that electric vehicles like his might still run if the power went out. “If the world were to be in total chaos and destruction and no petrol available, Tesla vehicles might still be charged with solar panels,” he wrote.
Whether the estimated 850,000 fully electric vehicles on the road, as estimated by the RAC, will be able to be charged by solar power is not entirely known. However, Nisbekar says there is a possibility that vehicles or ships may go in the wrong direction.
‘If a widely available set of new products is changed just a little bit to screw everything up, the impact can be huge,’ she says. Of course, humans can override this by simply ignoring the instructions and following the analog plan. Remember the maps?
This section contains related reference points (Related Nodes field).
Continuity of public services and access to food is critical in the face of persistent problems.
The Resilience Capabilities Program is a national initiative that oversees what happens in the event of a major emergency. At the local level, responsibility will fall to local councils who will organize where to evacuate people in the event of a disaster. In the event of a major incident such as a nuclear attack, there are believed to be no more than 50 usable nuclear bunkers around the country that would house key members of the government, the military, and those who may need it following the attack. Will have to run.
However, on a small scale, normal service does not take long to degrade. As we saw a few years ago, when a tanker got stuck in the Suez Canal and just-in-time supply chains were disrupted during Covid, shortages quickly developed.
In 2021, the army was placed on standby to combat food shortages caused by a shortage of trained truck drivers and the Royal Logistic Corps and other troops were to deliver food and other essential supplies, including medicine when needed. was to be used to assist in distribution.
The film and our digital problems today show how important technology and the internet have become in our daily lives. ‘It’s important to recognize that as we place more of our world’s responsibility for a better life on technology, we are becoming more and more dependent on it,’ says Nisbeker. No matter how much we prepare, we may still face great difficulties.’
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2024-07-21 16:47:55
