I remember watching the movie WarGames as a kid starring Matthew Broderick. The premise of this movie (for you young-uns) was an early look at the fear of technology in the Information Age: some kid managing to hack into the computers that controlled our nuclear missiles and almost starting World War III. And now, 30 years later, the threat from hackers of all stripes is a much more insidious one. Rather than an extension of an existential fear, the threat has become much more personal. The idea of government computers getting hacked became the reality of Target, Home Depot and others getting hacked, raising the spectre of identity theft. This hack of Sony has now brought computer hacking full circle, turning 1980s science fiction into 2010s clandestine acts of war. Terrorism has taken on a new dimension, stepped out of the Dark Internet, and now stalks the commercial internet openly. The Sony hack is looking more and more like the internets version of 9/11. hacking has been around for decades, but it took a high-profile attack on a major player to bring the problem to the forefront of American public debate. Clooney is entirely correct; the game has now changed, and we need to get used to the new paradigm.
Posted on: Fri, 19 Dec 2014 16:13:48 +0000
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