By adopting such Nineteenth-Century criminal grooming methods to the online world of the Twenty-First Century, today’s threat actors are effectively criminalizing an entire generation not to pick pockets but to rifle fat online crypto wallets instead. When the media reports that a nineteen-year-old hacker has been arrested at his parent’s house for a major hack, such as the one that recently occurred at Transport for London (TfL), the sinister cybercriminals who may have orchestrated the cyber-attack doubtless breathe a sigh of relief. “What the police should be asking in a case like is who has been grooming the teenage hacker and for how many years?” says Fraser Hay, CEO and co-founder of one-year-old UK start-up The Hacking Games, whose aim is to use online gaming, TV and other media to encourage teenagers away from a life of online crime and towards careers in ethical hacking.
Chief executives frequently vie with one another for the spotlight when delivering key speeches at major conferences. But the most-talked-about address of the day, given to a packed auditorium at the International Cyber Expo in London’s Olympia showground, forbade any recording or photographing of his talk. He also insisted he be referred to only as “Paul F”. “Paul F”’s bashfulness became understandable when he explained that the UK’s National Protective Security Authority (NPSA), where he is head of physical security, is now part of Britain’s secret intelligence service MI5. His talk neatly summed up the central theme of the show by providing evidence that the difference between cybercrime and physical crime has become blurred to the point of invisibility. He asked the very relevant question of whether a small drone spying into a City office using a telescopic lens and an 8k camera to read the staff’s log-in details through the window is a physical or a cyber-crime.
A staggering 14 percent of cyber incidents are due to senior IT security staff errors, compounded by a further 15% of errors caused by other IT staff. According to a new study published by cybersecurity firm Kaspersky, over the last two years, 77 percent of companies experienced between one and six cybersecurity breaches, with IT security staff being directly culpable for almost a third of all cybersecurity breaches.
Sign in to your account