Difficult to truly unplug

Any escape from the increasing digital warfare between hackers and endless security services updates? Over coffee, a friend and I concluded a person should just unplug and revert to old-fashioned devices.

Watching a PBS “Nova” program on “The Age of Hackers,” I learned it was difficult to truly unplug.

Some unintended consequences of this constantly shifting digital arms race cause both doom and hope. Stuxnet 2010, for example: A digital attack designed to program Iran’s own machines (frequency controllers) to destroy a single plant of nuclear enrichment centrifuges. That computer malware slipped in, looked for certain peripherals, found one location and destroyed about 1,000 centrifuges, setting Iran’s higher speed enrichment back for months. It didn’t break encryptions; it got inside; somehow manually plugging in a removable thumb drive.

The doom? Now, Stuxnet has gone into the wild, infecting some 100,000 machines worldwide, including grid and security controllers for banking, power, water, transportation, food and medicine.

The hope? I worry less now about uranium enrichment by a Windows system anywhere in the world.

Who did it: Dovish intended or hawkish unintended consequences?

Duane Schofield

Cusick