Who can harm you?

 

Image from Pixabay

Brrr-iiiing ... According to ChatGPT, that's a good onomatopoeia of a passing scooter. But that's besides the point; I will definitely write more about artificial intelligence, but for now it's about that scooter. Because it shouldn't pass me at all in that place.

I’ll explain. Our neighborhood is intersected by various cycle paths, which offer you a shorter route than if you used the normal road network. A large part of these cycle paths have a rectangular blue sign with the text 'cycle path'. That is traffic sign G13 of the Dutch traffic regulations, and it means that you can walk and cycle there. You have no business there with a scooter with a combustion engine (unless the engine is off). You guess where this is going: that sign is ignored en masse by scooterists. When another one of those cracked by recently and we were talking about it, my wife said: “Well, who's going to hurt you?” And indeed: the police and the municipality point the finger at each other and it’s already six years ago that the Cyclists' Union mentioned a municipal trial elsewhere in the city with signs reading 'prohibited for scooters', which we would have to wait for. I am still waiting.

Who can actually harm you if you do things that are not allowed in the cyber domain? Many things happen there that are a lot more intense than riding your scooter on a G13 cycle path. We are talking about cyber criminals who use their technical knowledge and/or skills to dishonestly obtain money or goods. These are the people who send you a text message about a package that could not be delivered, with a link that takes you to a fake website, where they ask for data with which they then digitally rob you. Or those that shut down hospitals with ransomware, putting healthcare services at serious risk, as recently happened in London. That appears to be a case of hacktivism, by the way: Qilin , the gang behind this attack, claims the attack is revenge for British government activities in an unspecified war (but we all know it's about Ukraine). Qilin also says they are sorry that patients are suffering from the attack but that it is not their fault. That stupid statement makes me angry.

Whether someone can harm the cybercriminal depends on two factors: how good they are at digital hide-and-seek, and where they live. Both of these factors are also linked. If you live in a civilized world, you have to erase your digital traces very carefully to prevent the police from showing up on your doorstep sooner or later. On the other hand, if you live in a country where they see cybercrime as normal work, as long as you do not target citizens of your own country, then you have little to fear. Yes, occasionally reports come out about the arrest of a Russian hacker, but the vast majority can go about their business freely and live in luxury. Some Russian malware even checks whether a computer to be attacked has a Cyrillic keyboard installed and if so, they leave it alone.

State actors (a fancy term for cybercriminals who work on behalf of a government) are also joining the fray. You can carry out a ransomware attack and make it look like you're in it for money, while the actual goal of that government is to take a company or agency offline for a while, or to steal their secrets - because that has been an additional function of ransomware for several years. It is often used as an additional threat: we will publish the captured data if you do not pay. But perhaps that data is also intended for their own use. There are also state actors who commit cybercrime to obtain foreign exchange. According to the UN, North Korea has raked in three billion dollars in six years.

And then there is that newspaper headline in the Dutch newspaper Het Parool from early last year: “Very young hackers did not come from Russia or North Korea, but from Zandvoort” (which is a town on the North Sea coast). They didn’t hide well enough, whilst living in a country where the police do go after cyber criminals and also play a leading role internationally.

Young people can playfully drift into crime, sometimes not even realizing that they are crossing a line. Parents often think that their teenager is just gaming. Both parents and their offspring must be made more aware of legislation in this area, and see to it that the available talents are used in a legal manner. If you don't know that something is not allowed, you don't feel guilty.

Which brings me back to those scooters. Older generations, who received their scooter license for free with their car driver license, may never have learned that G13 sign and therefore do not know that they are not allowed to drive there. But all those young people, they have to know that sign because they had to study for their license, right? Do they not see the sign along the road, or do they simply ignore it? Because, who can harm you?

 

And in the big bad world...

• this accusation will also be pointless.
• Chinese spies also use ransomware as a tool.
• Of course, bad things also happen in the south of the Korean peninsula.
• an ID verification company leaked data from TikTok, Uber and Twitter users, among others.
• client-side scanning (chat control) has been banned for the time being in the EU and Australia.
• Telegram employs far too few people to guarantee your security and privacy.
• security specialist is a long-term promising profession. [DUTCH]
• Temu's shopping app is accused of serious privacy violations in the US.