Cyber Warfare – 2024
What If?
In this article, I will explain a simple method to bring an entire country to it knees in a matter of minutes. It is written as a “what if” scenario that should help you to understand why your purchasing choices need to be very seriously reevaluated in 2024. The sad truth is that some of what I describe has actually happened in some isolated instances over the years and nobody has learned from the experience. In fact, manufacturers make every effort to hide “mistakes” rather then announce them.
Australia Crippled For 9 Hours
Australia experienced one of these “mistakes” on 8 November 2023. A trivial firmware update in one of Optus’s edge routers, resulted in the cascade of failures, resulting in a national communications failure that directly impacted over 10 million people and over 400,000 businesses for 9 hours. This failure took only a few minutes to cripple the entire nation.
“Firmware” is simply a software program written with the sole purpose of defining the functionality of a smart technology item.
Most modern technology items (cars, phones, kitchen appliances, TVs, computers, etc.) have firmware, so read on and see how this could be exploited, by criminals, rather than by “mistake”.
How to “Kill” an Appliance Remotely
Many of the everyday items we own have the ability to update the firmware remotely. In many cases this is initiated by the manufacturer. The two most popular “appliances” that are updated regularly are your mobile smartphone and now, most new vehicles are also “updated” in this way.
The excuse given by most manufacturers for having this functionality is that they are able to sell you the product before it has been fully tested. Then when they have done some testing, and the they have had an opportunity to find some of the software bugs, they do the remote firmware upgrade.
There are two common things that can happen during the firmware update that result in a “dead” appliance.
- Power is removed during the firmware upgrade.
- The firmware upgrade has one or more software bugs that make upgrade fail and under the right circumstances, leave the appliance in a state where it no longer functions
Under these circumstances, it is possible to “brick” the appliance. This term affectionately refers to the conversion of an expensive appliance to a common household brick.
Cyber Attack To Deliberately Kill Appliances
If the firmware that is downloaded by the appliance contains malicious code, other things are possible.
The code could run routines which cause physical damage to the appliance.
In an electric vehicle such as Tesla, the batteries have sophisticated temperature management software built-in. If that was changed to only “heat” only and then disable remote communication, it could potentially turn all of the vehicles into incendiary devices at once.
In a new vehicle with a central engine management computer (with online updates), malicious code could turn on the throttle at 100% and disable all inputs, such as keys, etc. This will guarantee the engine would get hot and perhaps get damaged.
In a smartphone, it could run code which disables all of the keys, then runs code specifically designed to drain the battery and again block connection to your telecommunications carrier, WiFi and Bluetooth by changing the internal network addresses and identifiers. This would effectively make your smartphone useless, requiring a visit to a repair shop and then repairs may not even be possible.
Since your smartphone may even have access to your banking details, it is also conceivable to initiate monetary deductions before “self destructing” as described above.
User Convenience, Manufacturer’s Expedience and Centralised Services All Make This Easy.
In the push to get more people online and have their appliances connected and authorised by central databases, we have paved the way for this malicious behaviour.
Up to now, most of the major data breaches appear to have had the goal to seek and collect your personal data for the purpose of making money for the cybercriminal organisations.
With a coordinated effort by an angry country, we could well see my scenario take place in the near future. Given that it will not pollute, kill or destroy real-estate and costs nothing to do, it remains a realistic possibility.
All that the criminals have to do it get into the databases that contain the software for the appliances, or add a Trojan type of virus code to software repositories within the organisations. By hijacking server addresses, it would even be possible to do this on the Internet using information obtained from developer accounts which may have been stolen in previous data breaches. If the motivation is high enough, then any or all of these common attack vectors could be exploited.
With the increased number of cyber attacks on large businesses and government systems, it should be obvious that there is no practical defence for anything like this. Convincing the public that it can never happen just doesn’t wash. Getting more and more systems to communicate via central systems such as the Digital ID and digital currencies, promoted as “convenience initiatives”, even further raises the risk level that most countries now face.
What Can You Do To Protect Yourself?
The bottom line is don’t buy essential equipment that requires an online account to function.
- In the case of smartphones, you do have some options in your smartphone’s device settings. Perhaps consider disabling the “auto” or “overnight updates”. The reason that security experts suggest that you do the updates when they come out is that the existing code already has weaknesses that can be exploited by cybercriminals. If you want to be conservative, only update manually, when you are confident that others have updated similar devices without problems.
- In the case of modern vehicles you need to ask whether your new vehicle will work normally without a network connection. I would even suggest seeking ways to switch off network access and only enable it, when you need it, if you fully trust your government and vehicle manufacturer.
- Home automation is usually a lesser problem as there are many appliances, from many different manufacturers. You just have to review all of the devices you have connected to see whether you feel that they are really necessary to run your house, or connect to the Internet and what would you do if they stopped functioning.