10-02-2020 , 02:04 PM
Quote:Cybersecurity is important.
In fact, it was already important way back in the years before cybercriminals started making money out of malevolent software – before we needed terminology such as phishing, botnets, attack chains, exploit kits, spyware and ransomware.
Back when computer viruses were almost entirely about showing off to imaginary chums, or having a destructive joke at everyone else’s expense on Friday the Thirteenth by deleting their programs one by one…
…well, even back then, cybercrime (as we unexceptionably call it now) was neither witty nor innocent.
Then, starting in about 2000 or 2001, cybercrooks figured out not only how to spread mayhem with malware, but also how to make money illegally, too.
Lots of money. Lots and lots and lots of money.
At the start of the 2000s, crooks were scamming $100 a time with popups for fake charities to which you’d send money for bogus good causes; by the end of the decade they were stealing payment card numbers and helping themselves directly to $1000 or more at a time; in 2020 they’re into blackmail in a big way by stealing or scrambling your data and extorting you into buying it back for $1,000,000 a time.
The worst of it is that cybercrime directly affects all of us.
No matter how unimportant we might feel in the digital economy, or how little we think we might have for cybercrooks to take, we all have data that’s worth something to cybercrooks – and there are whole swathes of the cyberundergound getting wealthy at our expense just by stealing data to sell on to someone else.
Simply put: a cybersecurity injury to you can quickly turn into a cybersecurity injury to everyone else.
Continue reading HERE