The picture is of my gym locker padlock.
It is a three-wheel model, which means it has 1000 possible combinations. Considering it has to protect a gym bag with an inhaler in it, that is good enough. In Finland, I don't really need a lock at all, but I like most others put on on, as is the custom - and it takes away the annoyingness of opening up a "free" locker and having someone's stuff in there, by signalling it is taken.
Today I was reading an overview of the hack in France that targeted supermarket fridge temperatures through a remote access control, pushing them up overnight and spoiling the food within thousands of them. What a fucking waste of food. But on top of that, it is another reminder of how convenience comes at a cost, as does everything having access to the internet.
And I think that this is particularly salient now, because hackers are becoming "hackers", where they are less Hugh Jackman in Swordfish, and more nerd with the right prompts. The bar to hack has been significantly lowered in the same way the bar to take a good photo has been lowered with digital cameras. Now, "anyone" with a bit of knowledge and skill can do what would have taken an expert to do earlier.
And just like how photographers have become ubiquitous due to smart phones, the number of hacks are going to increase because both the bar is lower, and the desire to do damage is higher. And the challenge with a larger pool of those looking to do damage, is that the amount of potential targets increases as do the potential vectors of attacks. As of yesterday, no one was really thinking that they should protect their fridge from hackers pushing the temperature up, did they? Sure, Danfoss the company behind the software that was hacked likely put security in place in some respect, but probably didn't see it as a likely target for mischief.
Everything is a target now.
Which means that no matter what a company makes, it is a potential target for hackers and they are going to have to find ways to secure their products. Computers, servers, websites, phones and now cars are getting the attention, but connected fridges and freezers, heating systems, washers and dryers, dishwashers, toothbrushes... whatever, it can all become a point of failure in many different ways. And there are likely many thousands of people in the world willing to do damage, just for the hell of it. And it will work like a chain reaction, where one inspires another, and another, with each being a different target.
What could go wrong...
The future is always unprecedented, but we are entering into a stage of existence where we should be more secure as a species, but we are becoming less. Rather than stability of experience, there is going to be increasing volatility, with climate change, financial collapse, social disruption and a lot of technology that can be (and is being) weaponised in multiple ways in the hands of everyone, from the governments and corporations, down to children.
We are never secure.
Because there is no certainty. But humanity should be getting increasingly stable as it advances, yet the direction is turning the other way. And the more it does so, the more people will be interested in doing damage, like angry children knocking over a tower of blocks in a tantrum. And this means that instead of investing into growth of humanity, we are going to keep investing into protection of what we currently have. It is like our spending on wars, when a healthy society wouldn't be at war at all. We are not a healthy society.
This is petty vandalism, at scale.
The internet gives global reach, which means instead of breaking a shop window, a vandal can target a company globally. And because so many companies are reliant on a narrow set of services, the impacts can be amplified. Millions of metaphorical windows broken simultaneously, with the companies not paying the price, but the consumers. Which puts more pressure on people in an environment that will create more vandals.
More theft, more corruption, more disruption.
We are a long way from healthy, so we have to keep protecting ourselves from the unnecessary. But ultimately, the cost of protection becomes so high, that regression in other areas is the only possible way to keep feeding the security measures. Like North Korea shooting missiles into the sea, while its people eat tree bark.
At what point can we invest into flourishing?
We could do it now.
We won't.
In a healthy society, most security measures would be redundant.
We used to be able to leave the doors unlocked.
Taraz
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