How Does the Novel COVID-19 Affect Daily Personal Cyber Security in the United States?
Author: Steven Yousef; 2020
2020 has been an extremely hectic and stressful first 3 months to say the least. With the growing tensions between the United States and Iran, the extreme wildfires in Australia, the death of the NBA legend Kobe Bryant, and now the historically rapid growth of the Coronavirus affecting China, Iran, Italy, and the United States now leading the world in total cases the most. With all that’s going on, we often forget about other things that affect our daily lives and the safety of our lives such as heart disease, cancer, motor vehicle accidents, suicide, and the flu itself(Weatherspoon, 2018). Apart from the leading causes of death, we are all vulnerable to a cyber-attack every day. To briefly describe cyber security and cyber-attacks, there are various types of attacks that can take place such as device compromise, which obtains total control of the device. Disruption, which interferes with a device performing its duty. Data exfiltration, which steals sensitive information. Bad data injection, which submits data to a system without detection affecting the integrity of the information. Lastly, there is advanced persistent threat, which gains extended access to a device(Lu, Reeves, 2014). All these attacks can take form of a DOS/DDOS, phishing/spear-phishing, a virus(no pun intended) or worm, a trojan horse, and many other different types of attack(Lu, Reeves, 2014). Table 1 below shows the theory of the motivation of these threat actors. As they’re more amateurly named, hackers(Madarie, 2017). In layman’s terms, threat actors are essentially motivated by politics, profit/money, ideological/ideological violence, satisfaction for thrill-seekers, and discontent(CCCS, 2018). At the end of the day, a threat actor will only carry out an attack if they are going to receive a return on investment. In other words, is the attack that they are going to carry out giving them more return of satisfaction or money than the risk that it takes actually do the attack? On the contrary, cyber security is essentially the defense against the attacks that these threat actors launch.
Considering schools and jobs across the country are now operating from home, the use of personal of technology is possibly at an all time high. Not only that, but the majority of people are taking this time to self-quarantine which theoretically would also increase their use of technology. This is an excellent opportunity for hackers to take advantage of this increased use of technology not only because there are more fish in the ocean, but because the desire for thrill seeking and monetary motivation has increased. In 2019 alone, there were a recorded 1802 cyber events equaling an average of 150.167 cyber events per month. In January and February of 2020, there were 151 and 186 cyber events, respectively, both surpassing the monthly average of last year. 2018 had a total of 1337 cyber events with 115 in January and slightly more in February with an average of 111.41 per month. Knowing these statistics, it may be hard to argue that the Coronavirus in the past two months has actually affected personal cyber security in daily lives considering that the number of cyber events has increased each year since 2018. Additionally, it is important to note that this source only takes input from people of cyber-attacks that they experience or witness but it is still reflective of the fact that the number of attacks continue to increase yearly(which is a different discussion for a separate article)(Hackmageddon, 2020). Regardless of the trend, it is important to notice that the increased use of technology will inevitably result in an increase of cyber attacks across the nation. I expect the trendline to spike up for the month of March as this is when jobs and schools began to take affirmative action in keeping people at home and continuing operation virtually. This in return is going to increase the use of group facetime which is vulnerable to a DDOS attack resulting in downtime for whatever software whether its zoom, blackboard collaborate, houseparty, etc. This is also going to significantly increase the use of emails between people which is going to increase the use of spear phishing attacks in return. The CDC also warns that people should remain vigilant when viewing their emails or messages from outside because threat actors could be sending emails acting as someone else in order to get you to download an attachment containing malware or tricking you into giving up sensitive information.
We as a country are more vulnerable than ever at this time, not just to this deadly and rapidly spreading virus, but virtually as well to the bad guys who are willing to continue to compromise our technology and our information despite the hard time that we are going through as a human race. Some things that we can do to better protect ourselves is to continue to be suspicious and smart about how we open links, search the web, and download content. It is also important to have a firewall that will sniff the packets that are entering your laptop when a link from online is being downloaded. This will increase your chances of avoiding an attack against you because most of the time, it is very obvious when someone is attempting to carry out a cyber-attack whether it is a phishing attack or a malicious download link. For more advanced technology users, it also wouldn’t hurt to use a packet sniffing software such as Wireshark which can help you detect if an unauthorized user has entered your network.
I expect the number of attacks to increase as the month of March comes to an end and to increase even more in April due to the widespread use of technology across the country. It is important to stay vigilant and practice good cyber security in the following months if you are one of those who are being affect by the increased use of technology. It may be some time before things return back to normal, if they ever return back to normal. This could also be a sneak peak into the future indicating how much more technology will be part of our daily lives and what that means from the cyber security perspective. Threat actors are becoming more and more advanced in respect to their ability to launch attacks which requires us to become more and more defensive online.
Table 1. Motivational Goals of the Ten Value Types and their Content Items (Madarie, 2017)
Universalism
Tolerance, understanding, appreciation, and protection of people and nature (social justice, equality, peace, wisdom, broadmindedness, protecting the environment, unity with nature, beauty).
Benevolence
Preserving or enhancing the welfare of close others (helpful, forgiving, loyal, honest, responsible).
Conformity
Restraining urges that are likely to harm or upset others, or violate social norms or expectations (self-discipline, politeness, obedience, honouring parents and elders).
Tradition
Respecting, accepting, and committing to customs and ideas imposed on an individual by one’s culture or religion (humbleness, moderation, devotion, respect of tradition).
Security
Safety and stability of self, direct relationships, and society at large (national security, family security, social order, reciprocation of favours, clean).
Power
Dominance or control over people and non-human resources, attaining social prestige (authority, wealth, social power and recognition, preserving public image).
Achievement
Personal success or competence as defined by social norms or cultural standards (ambitious, influential, successful, capable).
Hedonism
Pleasure, satisfying sensuous needs (pleasure, enjoying life).
Stimulation
Challenge in life, excitement, and novelty (an exciting life, a varied life, pursuing daring activities).
Self-direction
Autonomy over one’s thoughts and actions, not being controlled or influenced by others (creativity, curious, independent, freedom, choosing own goals).
Sources:
· 12 Leading Causes of Death in the United States. (n.d.). Healthline. Retrieved March 28, 2020, from https://www.healthline.com/health/leading-causes-of-death
· Coronavirus | CISA. (n.d.). Retrieved March 28, 2020, from https://www.cisa.gov/coronavirus
· Cyber Attacks Statistics. (n.d.). HACKMAGEDDON. Retrieved March 28, 2020, from https://www.hackmageddon.com/category/security/cyber-attacks-statistics/
· Security, C. C. for C. (2018, August 15). Canadian Centre for Cyber Security. Canadian Centre for Cyber Security. https://cyber.gc.ca/en/
· Tcipg-reading-group-fall_2014_09–12.pdf. (n.d.). Retrieved March 28, 2020, from https://tcipg.org/sites/default/files/rgroup/tcipg-reading-group-fall_2014_09-12.pdf
· https://tcipg.org/sites/default/files/rgroup/tcipg-reading-group-fall_2014_09-12.pdf
Keywords: Cybersecurity, Cyber, Attack, Defense, Cyber-attack, Coronavirus, COVID-19, Hackers, Threat actors.
