The early architects of the internet did not want it to kill anybody. In cyber security expert Bruce Schneier’s new book, David Clark, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, recalls their philosophy: 'It is not that we didn’t think about security. We knew that there were untrustworthy people out there, and we thought we could exclude them'. Schneier describes how the internet, developed as a gated community, is now a battleground where these untrustworthy people cause great harm: harnessing computers to kill by crashing cars, disabling power plants and perhaps, soon enough, using bioprinters to cause epidemics ... Schneier skilfully guides readers through serious attacks that have happened already — and moves on to those he believes are just over the horizon ... This book is convincing, but not comforting. Schneier is clear on what should happen next but admits he is no political expert. In the end, today’s divided politics may end up being yet another vulnerability for hackers to exploit — and the internet may kill.
Electronic security expert Bruce Schneier’s studiously terrifying new book Click Here To Kill Everybody: Security and Survival in a Hyper-connected World, is a concerted counter-playbook to the end of human civilization, and the deaf ears it will fall upon have been deadened by two completely erroneous assumptions: that an unregulated Internet is better than a regulated one, and that Internet problems only affect people on the Internet ... The urgent message of Click Here To Kill Everybody is that overcoming such inertia is now literally a matter of life and death. The book should be required reading for anybody who’s ever put their life or the life of their loved ones in the hands of ‘smart’ technology ... and in 2018, that’s everybody.
Schneier, a fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University, provides a clear perspective on the threat posed by the evolution of the internet into what is commonly referred to as the 'internet of things.' As 'everything is becoming a computer... on the Internet,' with even pedestrian items such as light bulbs or refrigerators collecting, using, and communicating data, the convenience and efficiency of such 'smart' technology comes at the cost of increased vulnerability to the schemes of crafty hackers. Horror stories, such as a vehicle’s controls being taken over remotely, are not new, but Schneier’s vast experience enables him to tie together many strands and put them in context ... Schneier concedes that his book has 'a gaping hole' in not explaining how his nuanced recommendations for increasing security and resilience could become policy, but it is a useful introduction to the dimensions of the challenge.
By way of an opening gambit, the author posits three scenarios in which hackers take over machines and computer systems, from printers to power plants, both to demonstrate their ability to do so and to show how the interdependence of the web can easily be put to work against us. In one of those scenarios, real-world to the core, Russian hackers came into a Ukrainian power plant through a malware backdoor, 'then remotely took control of the center’s computers and turned the power off.' That’s not just a threat to life, but it also erodes trust in social and economic systems, the basis for civil society ... With due pessimism, the author argues that individuals must do their best to harden their own security even as governments battle against encryption, anonymity, and other security measures by claiming that the 'Four Horsemen of the Internet Apocalypse—terrorists, drug dealers, pedophiles, and organized crime'—will be the ultimate beneficiaries of secure systems ... Useful for an internet user but particularly for those concerned with privacy, civil liberties, and related issues.
