Bad Guys From the Future

What does the future of cybersecurity look like? And what will the technological vulnerabilities look like in, say, 100 years? What level of our lives will hackers with malicious intentions have access to, and what will they be able to control if cybersecurity measures are not in place? Weren’t the 1980s a great era, when barely anyone had a computer? These are important questions that we must be asking ourselves today to prepare for tomorrow’s threats.

Naturally, we think of criminals or rogue governments as being behind malware and cyber attacks, but in the not-so-distant future, such activities could possibly be orchestrated by the computers themselves. And this is one of the great fears regarding Artificial Intelligence (AI). Today, as technology moves into the AI sphere and more computers and software rely on data to make decisions, the possibility of AI-related attacks is becoming more of a reality.

According to a joint study by the Institute for Parallel Processing and Chalmers University in Sweden, “Critical systems and networks constitute the critical infrastructure of society. The extensive use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) and their proliferation in many new areas, such as process control and critical infrastructures, pose substantial challenges to critical systems’ security.

Modern technologies are used for industrial process control and may introduce new vulnerabilities and even be the cause of incidents. On the other hand, advanced automation is widely used in critical infrastructures through industrial control systems, something that leads to new security problems.

Critical infrastructures (CIs) themselves expand the scale of security threats with their complexity, large connectivity, interdependency, and possible cascading effects. The characteristics of critical systems thus highlight the need for security solutions specific to those systems…”

Autonomous vehicles are one area of AI that could prove quite deadly if hackers are able to infiltrate software. With some lines of code and a touch of a button, hackers can literally drive your electric car to whatever hideout they please - remotely.

According to research by the University of Huddersfield, cars would need to be able to defend against all sorts of threats, including phishing, Denial of Service (DoS), Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS), as well as attacks on engine control sensors, keyless entry and ignition systems, and GPS navigation and vehicle location systems, in addition to many others.

Smart homes are already vulnerable, and the idea of getting locked in or out of your own home could be a potential danger as hackers could take complete control of your home systems. The home may be a person’s castle, but it could also become one’s nightmare. The loss of control of one’s home systems, garage door, front door, lights, and anything else attached to the internet, is too horrifying to contemplate.

Most futuristic sci-fi movies include robots, and while the iRobot or Roomba floor-cleaning robots are harmless, human-like or animal-like robots in the future could represent a major danger to the safety and well-being of their owners and those around them. A rogue robot could potentially cause tremendous damage and could possibly kill a person. A robot with AI is potentially even more dangerous, and Hollywood has already done a great job of harnessing the public’s imagination of what could go wrong with such machines.

If space travel for citizens and trips to the Moon or Mars is to become a reality, serious thought will have to be put into how to secure spacecraft, launching pads, and human habitation in space. Even the smallest level of hacking could jeopardize the entire space industry and could certainly threaten the lives of anyone hoping to travel.

The European Union Agency for Cybersecurity (ENISA) is an example of one organization among many that have taken steps to try and mitigate future threats by predicting what those threats may be and perhaps eliminating them before they become problematic. Hopefully, with real effort and thought by leaders in the tech industry, we will be able to map out future threats and at least reduce the threat of cyber attacks.

Perhaps one day in the future, people will realize the 80s, when people survived without computers, really was the greatest decade.