Page 77 - BBC Knowledge - October 2017 IN

hackers:

CAN THEY BE

BEATEN?

T HE last few months have been
busy for European politics,
with Austria, the Netherlands,
France and the UK all heading
to the polls. Each one of these elections was
preceded by fears that hostile powers, acting
online, would seek to manipulate the outcome
The rise of of the elections. These fears came closest to
being realised in France, where eventual
the internet has winner Emmanuel Macron and his En Marche!
party were victim to a 9GB leak of emails, just
48 hours before the voting took place. Things
transformed hacking are little different across the Atlantic, with
four legislative committees, as well as the FBI,
investigating alleged Russian influence over
into an opportunity the US election, including the hacking of
Hillary Clinton’s emails. In the UK, hacking
was recently in the news when the WannaCry
for crime, activism ransomware worm crippled computer systems
in 40 NHS hospitals in May. In the wake of
each attack, politicians spoke urgently of
and political a need to ‘regulate’ the internet. Across
the West, democracy and freedom are under
sustained attack, and at the heart of the battle
interference. is the grasp on technology.
Maybe that sounds like hyperbole, or even
the stuff of a movie trailer. There are set to be
So who are the 8.4 billion connected devices in the world by
the end of this year – 20 billion by 2020 – and
last year, in the US alone, there were more
hackers and can than 1,000 recorded data breaches. Hacking
isn’t just about pinching passwords any more:
the geeks have truly inherited the Earth.
they be stopped? malware now than there has ever been,”
“There’s no question that there is more

Words: Chris Hall PHOTO: GETTY says David Emms, principal security
researcher at antivirus and internet security
specialists Kaspersky Labs. “And the volume