HACKED: Time to buck up cyber security, awareness

When trading grinded to an abrupt halt on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) for more than three hours recently, I couldn’t help but think of the Gotham Stock Exchange heist from the movie, The Dark Knight Rises.

No I’m not suggesting any sort of mischief or that some super-villain was involved.

It was soon learnt that there was a technical glitch, and consistent with regulatory framework, exchange authorities decided to suspend trading until measures to resolve the problem were worked out. The glitch at the NYSE earlier this month wasn’t the only incident that made me say hmmm that day, as United Airlines also faced technical anomalies which grounded flights for an hour or so.

Then The Wall Street Journal‘s website buckled, and all this was happening around the same time.

The FBI were quick to rain on the parade of conspiracy theorists everywhere.

“We’re not big believers in coincidence either. We’ve been in contact with all three companies to see what’s going on…We do not see any connection to a cyber-breach or a cyber-attack…It does appear that it’s not a cyber-intrusion,” said FBI Director James Comey to the Senate Judiciary Committee, as reported by the Washington Post.

Such cyber-episodes raise concerns about the sheer vulnerability of the technological systems that underpin most of our day-to-day activities in the virtual, internet and social media empowered sphere.

Closer to home, we witnessed the official social network accounts of the Royal Malaysia Police (RMP) being recovered after it was hacked earlier Monday.

The Inspector-General of Police, Tan Sri Khalid Abu Bakar said PDRM’s Facebook page and Twitter account had been hacked at 2.20pm by an unknown party, identified as #AnonGHost.

Going back to earlier this year, the official website for Malaysia Airlines was hacked twice over the course of 30 minutes.

It’s not just agencies and corporations who are under siege.

In 2014, Malaysia Computer Emergency Response Team (MyCERT) Incident Statistics revealed that 1125 intrusions and 1302 intrusion attempts were present out of 5948 reported incidents on cyber related activities.

What does all this boil down to?

Definitely, a need for a safer and more secure cyberspace activity and engagement without having to be bugged by the thought or fear of not knowing if you will be the next victim of cyber-predators out there.

Time for me to consult my tech-guru on how to stay safe on the net, but if you don’t have your own cyber-security sensei to turn to, just visit CyberSecurity Malaysia’s website for advice.