Human beings have great potential to create new and amazing things. Unfortunately they also have a potential for destruction and chaos. Just this morning I picked up on two news stories that show how dependant we are on technology and how easy it is for malicious individuals to wreck havoc on others. The first story I came across was how Estonia is under an onslaught of targeted traffic from Russia aimed at bringing the country to it’s knees. Some news sources claim that this is the first such incident of cyberwarfare against an nation. Previous dDoS attacks have always been against specific companies or institutions.
The other case I came across was how a malicious email sent to EnGadget caused the price of Apple to drop by $4 billion, albeit for a very short period until the report was corrected. This shows how powerful hacking the stockmarket can be, as literally millions of dollars were won or lost on the trades that occurred in the half-hour it took for the misinformation to be corrected. And all it took was one email!
There’s no debating the fact that information (and misinformation) has tremendous power over our lives.
True, it’s alway dangerous to rely on technologies too much… I will know when the day my coffee maker gets hit by a virus 🙂
Bahahaaa Cindy. 🙂