Animal-Induced Cyber Threats

Introduction

The modern society has seen its growth being influenced by technological advancement. The current state affairs would not be closed without on the technological status, which goes all the way reflecting on big data, data science, blockchain technology, Artificial Intelligence and advanced computer systems in almost every sect or. For those delving into these fields, seeking computer science dissertation help can provide essential support. However, such advancements are never left without threats and currently, the world has its all the attention attracted to the cyber-wars, cyber-attacks and cyber-crime. The cyber warfare has also attracted the blame game between United States and Russia with fingers being pointed at the rising figures of hackers around the world. However, at Shmoocon Security Conference, Cris Thomas, dubbed SpaceRogue, offered a presentation on “35 Years of Cyberwar: The Squirrels Are Winning”, which can equally be a U-turn to the world in the fight against cyber-attacks. Thomas indicates that while hackers have evidently been blamed to cause damage to the infrastructures, they only contribute a small fraction of the damage which is sometimes exaggerated. Based on his observation, Thomas argues that, based on the findings from CyberSquirrel1, animal-induced infrastructure outages are growing each day. This means that animals, especially the squirrels, are going untouched and yet they contribute to the largest share of the infrastructural damage. Regardless of the critics and counterarguments, most of the cyber-attacks around the world are animal induced as far as infrastructural damage is put into consideration.

Cybersecurity

In support of the arguments and the findings presented by Thomas, the world needs to understand what is cyber and what would cyber-attacks mean in the real world. Cris Thomas indicates that most people around the world would be more afraid of the word “cyber” more than would try to understand what it means. The growing stereotype of hackers as being the sole actors or the threat actors cannot be eliminated from the contextual understanding of cyber-wars in such countries like the United States of America (USA), United Kingdom (UK), and China among others. The word cyber would closely be linked to malwares, phishing attacks or any malicious attacks inflicted or influenced by human factors. However, this understanding of the word “Cyber” is absolutely wrong (Wagenseil 2017). Perhaps, the findings made by Cris Thomas clearly insist on the stakeholders to ignore the stereotype and focus on real issues that seem to affect the infrastructure. In real sense, the word “cyber” means being skilled in governing or steering. Based on this, the word “cyber” would be linked to systems with internet and networks being part of.

However, due to dynamics in cyber security, the word cyber has been attached to the growing use of internet across the world (PYMNTS 2017). It is even more detrimental when key figures in the society would indicate that cyber wars would mean damages imposed by hackers. Cris Thomas suggestively indicates that the wrong understanding of the word “cyber has limited the understanding of people on matters associated to cyberattacks. In one of the security conferences, Ted Koppel, one of the famous news anchor, indicated that cyberattacks on the infrastructure is causing more damage than what nuclear war would cause (Wagenseil 2017). He went pointing out that the internet has become the weapon of mass destruction, which indicates limited understanding of cyber and the cyberattacks. Based on the misleading understanding of the word “cyber”, Thomas’ argument of the forgotten or ignored animal-induced damages can be justified on the grounds that countries have been fighting the unknown war with limited understanding of the causes and the actors.

Apart from the misleading understanding of the word “Cyber”, the growing cases of false accusation of human actors as the imminent cause of damage sends significant signals of animal induced infrastructural damages. The hysteria of hackers as the undoubted threat is wrongly argued and sometimes goes without proof. Cris Thomas seemingly does not dismiss the fact that hackers also cause significant damages to the infrastructures. However, the growing hysteria of hacking as the imminent source of the threat has always led to false accusation of the human actors (PYMNTS 2017). Thomas went ahead justifying the notion of false accusations sparked by the media society and sometimes, propagated by the victims. For instance, a series of cyberattacks on the Brazilian power system a decade ago was as a result of the poorly maintained equipment, and not the hacking as earlier indicated (Wagenseil 2017). The story was aired for 60 minutes on CBS News pointing fingers at the hackers.

Subsequently, a water pump failure in Illinois was squarely blamed on the Russian attackers in the year 2011. It would later turn out that the same pump was simply burned out and contractor remotely logged in the system while on his vacation in Russia. Another scenario includes that of Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan Pipeline explosion in Turkey (Capretta 2018). The owner of the entire pipeline indicated that the faucet was never linked to the grid network. However, significant sources emerged with the narrative of cyberattacks as the prime cause of the explosion. A similar case was cited in the Bowman Avenue Dam case, which placed the blame on the Iranian hackers. Investigations would later indicate that the damaged item was controlled electronically and could not be operated by unauthorized people. Such findings have raised eyebrows as people are left with unanswered questions of who is attacking system. While hackers would not avoid their contributions in cyberattacks, Cris Thomas seemingly insinuates that investigations should look deeper into what is eating up the system (Gallagher 2017).

With cyber, meaning implying governing the system or steering it, then cyberattacks investigations should not stop with the hackers but further look into factors interfering with the infrastructure. In the year 1987, it was found out that a squirrel was the one that took out power to the Nasdaq Computer Centre for over 90 minutes according to the reports established by the New York Times (Wagenseil 2017). The incident is said to have disrupted 20 million trades. Besides, a bird was found responsible of storing 300 pounds of the acorns in the microwave transmitter and Jellyfish were found pooling in one of the power plant water tank. According to Cris Thomas, Cyberwar has consistently been prophesized for 35 years. However, the hacking nation states like Iran, Russia and China will only want to put power in place for them to explore what is happening online. Such minor threats like the hacktivists, ISIS or North Korea do not have the sums of money, motivation, and time to instigate the Black Swan kind of an event (Gallagher 2017). Therefore, there are no pressing reasons as to why the hackers need to attack the grid. Besides, most of hackers would want a functional grid that would keep the system active.

In addition to fallacious accusation, Cris Thomas presentation is full of evidence, which can be justified by other pieces of evidence from other researchers. His research had a clear objective from the start, which included counteracting the ludicrousness of the Cyberwar claims by individuals in both the industry and the government. Upon launching CyberSquirrel1, Thomas was inspired by Josh Corman and Jericho of Attrition.org. While CyberSquirrel1 begun as a tweet feed way back in 2013, the tool quickly evolved and turned into a large data gathering platform (Wagenseil 2017). The tool has tracked more than 1700 outages, which are said to have affected over 5 million people. 8 deaths have also been reported since the start of the tracking process with 6 of them attributed to the squirrels downing the power lines.

Similar Ukrainian attacks have been baled on frogs, a claim that inverts the earlier which placed the responsibility on Russia. Thomas reports that squirrels have been responsible of 879 attacks against the infrastructure. Other animals that have been part of the destruction worldwide include Birds reported on 434 cases, Snakes reported on 83 cases, Raccoon reported on 72 incidences, rats reported on 36 incidences, and marten appeared in 22 cases. China and Russia reported zero attacks while United States claimed responsibility of one outage (Wagenseil 2017). The findings are further substantiated by individual cases that claimed the responsibility of the squirrels that not only caused damage, but also led loss of lives in some cases. Squirrels caused the blackouts in Trader Joe in South Carolina. The incident led to lose of power among 7200 people. While city officials argued that squirrel attacks were, 3800 more people were said to have lost power nine days after the first incident. In Portland, Oregon, squirrels are said to have been responsible in bringing down 19740 people’s lights in three occasions (Capretta 2018). More than 10000 suffered from power outages as a result of squirrel attacks in Kentucky in a span of only one week. Squirrels were also responsible of the blackouts in Kalamazoo.

However, it should be noted other animals such as sharks, raccoons and even birds have instigated infrastructural attacks. One such case was reported in 2016 where a vervet monkey was responsible for a blackout in Kenya, which spanned for four hours. The monkey is said to have slipped off the roof, which made it to fall on a transformer that caused a series of failure of a number of transformers (Capretta 2018). Incidents of chewed cables also cite squirrels and sharks as the responsible actors. Some sharks were found biting the transoceanic fibreoptic cables wit investigations citing that the sharks were attracted by the electromagnetic fields induced by the cables. Another incident cited raccoons which attacked an accelerator known as Tevatron, which took down the entire company for a number of days. Most of the findings established made Cris Thomas have received more support than they would have been challenged by other researchers (Gallagher 2017). This mean that the findings are established facts, which cannot be dismissed and cannot be ignored as far as Cyber wars are put into consideration.

It is worth noting that in as much as animals are identified as an added threat to the infrastructure; there are no long-term solutions to such attacks. Cyberattacks instigated by hackers would easily be blocked by putting in place better firewalls, installation of malware detectors and putting in place the supporting policies that would check on the contribution of people towards cyber security (Sanger and Broad 2017). While this would be counteracted through technological means, animal-induced attacks would rarely be counteracted technologically (PYMNTS 2017). Cris Thomas argues that the only solution to blackouts induced by squirrels is to restore the system back to its functional status, which can be done in few hours.

However, this may not sound as any other permanent solutions to cyberattacks, which are induced by hackers. In essence, the only solution to animal-induced attacks is to kill all the squirrels or any other animal species involved in the attack (Eldridge et al. 1999). Although, such actions sound impossible in such countries like the United States and United Kingdom, among other countries, where animal rights and environmental legislations are keenly observed. This means that killing animals is not an option or a solution to animal induced attacks (Gallagher 2017). If this remains to be condition, then squirrels would have their day in infiltrating the systems without any attacks planned against them. Cris Thomas argument is therefore beyond any reasonable doubt in that squirrels would go untouched as they leave behind a big damage to be repaired, covered or leave a lifetime scar especially where accidents are involved. Most of the animal-induced attacks have shown the recurring nature.

In South Carolina, blackouts were witnessed in Trader Joe, Veterans Affairs Hospital and in an airport in Virginia (Capretta 2018). Thousands of people were reported to have been affected by the blackouts with city official citing the rareness of the squirrel attacks. In a span of nine days, two attacks were reported with the second one involving an explosion of the circuit breaker in a town close to Rock Hill, South Carolina. In Michigan, Squirrel-Induced blackout affected 2000 people before causing a subsequent blackout in a week’s time which affected 1000 people. Most of the attempts by the Utility companies seemingly attract more costs in developing such tools like bushing covers and the arrester caps, which would make the squirrels to taken off balance. While such attempts show a struggle against animal-induced attacks, most of them still fail. This is evident in the increased cases of infrastructural attacks on the electrical grid in the United States and elsewhere (Capretta 2018). Again, most of the protectors are considerably developed for the power lines, which mean that solutions to contain jellyfish are not yet established. With most of the solutions hitting the bedrock, Cris Thomas’ argument of the squirrels winning the war remains valid and more justifiable (Eilstrup-Sangiovanni 2018). With over 800 cases of squirrel attacks reported worldwide, it is evident that animals are becoming more stubborn, and sometimes unattended to with companies indicating readiness to repair the damages more than they would establish permanent solutions.

In as much as the squirrels are winning, Cris Thomas seems to be leaving behind significant fact with regards to cyberattacks and the Cyber-wars. While his lecture would lean more towards animal-induced attacks on cyber, hackers too form part of the significant attacks on the internet and networks which are systems as well. While Cris Thomas insinuates that guns should be fired at squirrels, which seem untouched, hackers are also waging wars on systems with different intentions. Around the Christmas season in the year 2015, a power company is said to have landed blames on power outages in Ukraine (Capretta 2018). A malware was found to have turned off substations. While this raised more doubts and disagreements between different parties, a sample of the malware was handed in as strong evidence for the attack. Another scenario is that of infrastructural cyberattacks that led to physical damages. The attack is said to have been instigated by Stuxnet, which is an intricate as well as a complicated computer worm known for exploiting software vulnerabilities across the power plants characterize by uranium enrichment (Kshetri 2016). Stuxnet is fond of taking over or attacking the Programmable Logic Controllers. In addition, it is undeniable that internet hosts thousands of systems with companies establishing portals, websites and even web pages (Merino 2016). Apparently, attacks on the websites, portals and even web pages are essentially arranged by hackers. Cyberattacks reported by Facebook and Google are influenced more by human hackers. While Thomas puts his stand on squirrel attacks, he should equally show the same attention while discussing cyberattacks and the growth of hacking incidents.

Conclusion

In summation, Cris Thomas presents his position on “35 years Of Cyber wars, The Squirrels are winning”, where he argues that animal-induced attacks on the infrastructure are rising each day. The discussion affirms that such attacks exist because of a number of reasons. First, the discussion noted that there is misleading understanding of the word “cyber”, which is strongly linked to hacking. Secondly, the rise in the number of false accusation of human hackers means that animal-induced attacks are given no attention. In addition, the research conducted by Cris Thomas goes unchallenged due to the supporting evidence that cites incidences that occurred in real life and their timelines. Again, attempts to curb animal-induced attacks show no durability, which leaves more systems exposed to animals. However, the discussion also criticizes Thomas’ position by noting that human hackers cannot be ignored. Regardless of the criticism, animal-induced attacks are on the rise and seem to go unchallenged.

References

Capretta, B., 2018. Squirrels-Knowing Your Real Threats.

Merino, N. ed., 2016. Cybercrime. Greenhaven Publishing LLC.

Eldridge, K., Xu, J., Yin, W., Jeffery, A.M., Ronzello, J. and Boggs, S.A., 1999. Degradation of a silicone-based coating in a substation application. IEEE transactions on power delivery, 14(1), pp.188-193.

Sanger, D.E. and Broad, W.J., 2017. Trump inherits a secret cyberwar against North Korean Missiles. New York Times, 4.

Eichensehr, K.E., 2015. Cyberwar & International Law Step Zero. Tex. Int'l LJ, 50, p.357.

Eun, Y.S. and Aßmann, J.S., 2016. Cyberwar: Taking stock of security and warfare in the digital age. International Studies Perspectives, 17(3), pp.343-360.

Kshetri, N., 2016. Cyberwar: China and the United States. In Handbook of US–China Relations. Edward Elgar Publishing.

Eilstrup-Sangiovanni, M., 2018. Why the world needs an international cyberwar convention. Philosophy & Technology, 31(3), pp.379-407.