There are so many emerging technologies that will one day become commonplace amongst our lives, but also may even pose a security risk. MIT Technology Review in an article titled “Five emerging cyberthreats to worry about in 2019” written by Martin Giles stated that 2018 was a massive cybersecurity disaster because of things like massive data breaches. The article goes on to state that there will be even more data breaches in 2019 (par 2). The article also states that some emerging technology that could pose a lot of cybersecurity risk include the following: exploitation of of AI-generated fake video and audio, poisoning AI defense, hacking smart contracts, using quantum computers to break encryption, launching attacks from the computing cloud, using Internet of Things to pinpoint vulnerabilities, and 5G enabling more Internet of Things devices.
The MIT Technology Review article titled “Five emerging cyberthreats to worry about in 2019” written by Martin Giles also went on to state that because of advances in artificial intelligence things like fake audio and video can be almost indistinguishable from real content, this haunting revelation is called “deep fakes” (par 3). Mary Ellen Bates in her article stated “Say What? ‘Deepfakes’ Are Deeply Concerning” does a good job of breaking down exactly what “deep fakes” are. Mary Ellen Bates declares that a “deep fake” is a combination of “deep-learning” and “fake videos.” Mary Ellen Bates goes on to declare that artificial intelligence “deep-fake” software actually superimposes a person’s face onto an already existing image or video. This software starts to get truly disturbing when Mary Ellen Bates in her article states that celebrity’s faces have been inserted into pornographic videos and that the videos look very realistic. Mary Ellen Bates even goes on to reference Barack Obama’s warning about “deep-fake” videos. For obvious reasons having indistinguishable fake video and audio is a massive protentional problem. Deep fakes can have a negative impact on elections and even fuel the problem of misinformation.
Artificial Intelligence will inevitably play a big role in our future especially considering its promising ability to detect cyberthreats. With this new emerging technology comes the risks. The MIT Technology Review article titled “Five emerging cyberthreats to worry about in 2019” written by Martin Giles announces that hackers can poison artificial intelligence models to generate sophisticated, troublesome attacks (par 6). In Sen Chen, Minhui Xue, Lingling Fan, Shuang Hao, Lihua Xu, Haojin Zhu, and Bo Li’s article titled “Automated poisoning attacks and defenses in malware detection systems: An adversarial machine learning approach” they report that high-level hackers can adapt to emerging artificial intelligence technology by sabotaging machine learning classifiers and “polluting training data, rendering most recent machine-learning-based malware detection tools (such as Drebin, DroidAPIMiner, and MaMaDroid) ineffective.” Artificial intelligence holds power and promise, but with that power comes the risk of it being misused in the wrong hands.
Smart contracts are a new emerging technology that has revolutionized the way people do business. Martin Giles article titled “Five emerging cyberthreats to worry about in 2019” written in The MIT Technology Review does a great job of explaining what smart contracts are. Smart Contract according to The MIT Technology Review is basically software programs that are kept in blockchain and automatically execute digital asset exchange under the parameters they were encoded in. In a section of the book “Proceedings of the 28th Annual International Conference on Computer Science and Software Engineering” titled “Empirical Vulnerability Analysis of Automated Smart Contracts Security Testing on Blockchains” Reza M. Parizi, Dehghantanha, Ali and Choo, Kim-Kwang Raymond, Singh, and Amritraj all really lay out the vulnerabilities in smart contracts. The book mentions that creating safe and credible smart contracts is a challenge because there are complex semantics under the domain-specific languages and the way it is tested. The book goes on to mention that there have been high-profile events that showed blockchain smart contracts may contain a lot of code-security vulnerabilities that could cause a lot of financial damage. Mike Orcutt in The MIT Technology Review wrote an article titled “Ethereum’s Smart Contracts are full of holes” in which he gives the perfect example of the security vulnerabilities of smart contracts. Mike Orcutt conveys that in 2016 hackers stole 50 million dollars from the Decentralized Autonomous Organization that was unfortunately based on Ethereum blockchain. So, smart contracts although promisingly new technology can carve opportunity for hackers looking to commit crimes.
Google recently announced quantum supremacy with its quantum computers. Edd Gent in SingularityHub’s article titled “Investment in Quantum Computing Is Booming – But Will A Quantum Winter Follow?” stated that Google, Intel, and IBM all invested exorbitant amounts of money throughout several years into quantum computing. A relatively new report surfaced from the United States National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine urging the public to speed up preparations for the arrival of super-powerful quantum computers that will inevitably crack conventional cryptographic defenses. Martin Giles article on The MIT Technology Review titled “Five Emerging cyberthreats to worry about in 2019” mentioned that the United States National Institute of Standards and Technology are “working on standards for post-quantum cryptography to make this process easier.” Giles in the article also goes on to reveal that a relatively recent report came out from “a group of United States Quantum experts urges organizations to start adopting new and forthcoming kinds of encryption algorithms that can withstand a quantum attack.” The threat quantum computing may pose, will be immense and will fundamentally change cryptography. Quantum computing will also fundamentally change the way we interact with the world, but with technology so powerful comes again the opportunity for criminals to capitalize. Quantum computing is a very excitingly new emerging technology with some risks associated with it.
Cloud computing is another emerging technology that has revolutionized the way companies do business. Dr. Robert Polding’s Medium article titled “Cloud computing: the invisible revolution” does a good job of defining cloud computing. In Doctor Robert Polding’s article, he uses the National Institute of Standards and Technology definition of cloud computing. The National Institute of Standards and Technology defines cloud computing according to the article as five key characteristics, three services models, and four deployment models. The first of the five characteristics laid out in the Medium article reveals that cloud computing is self-service and on-demand, meaning the service is made ready for users without a middle-man administrator (par 5). The second of the five characteristics laid out in the article announces that cloud computing has broad network access, meaning cloud computing needs to easily accessible (par 6). The third of the five characteristics laid out in the article is that cloud computing is resource pooling, meaning that it operates under the assumption that all clients are fully utilizing cloud computing resources all at the same time (par 7). The fourth of the five characteristics laid out in the article mentions that cloud computing is rapidly elastic, meaning it simultaneously needs to automatically increase capacity while satisfying the needs of clients of the cloud service (par 8). Finally, the fifth of the five characteristics laid out in the article is that cloud services have to be measured, meaning the exact usage of services by clients is monitored and subsequently billed depending on the monitored amount. The first of the four deployment models outlined in the article is a public cloud, like Google, Amazon Web Services, Oracle, SAP, and iCloud (par 9). The second of the four deployment models outlined in the article is a private cloud, meaning the organization services the cloud themselves (par 10). The third of the four deployment models outlined in the article is the community model usually these services are utilized by firms that need extra privacy (par 11). Finally, the fourth of the four deployment models that is used in the National Institute of Standards and Technology definition and is outlined in the Medium article is called a hybrid model (par 12). The hybrid model (the most expensive deployment model) is a combination of both private and public cloud options (par 13). The National Institute of Standards and Technology also attributes three services models to the definition of cloud computing. The first of the three services models is the infrastructure of service examples of this include networking, storage, and virtual machines. The second of the three service models is the platform as a service, meaning the amalgamation of tools that allow clients to develop custom cloud applications. Lastly, the third of the three service models is the software as a service, meaning there is pre-made software used in the web browser (par 14). The National Institute of Standards and Technology’s combination of the five characteristics, three service models, and four deployment models give a comprehensive definition of the complex subject which is cloud computing. Cloud computing hosts large companies’ information and even sometimes manages Information technology systems remotely according to the MIT Technology Review article (par 13). The access to valuable information cloud computing firms have makes them a large target for hackers. The MIT Technology Review article lists a really good example of this they list the indictment of Zhang Shilong and Zhu Hua who were hackers with connections to China’s Ministry of State Security. The group hacked into computers of a United States company that Information Technology systems remotely for other firms. The group’s alleged intentions were to steal intellectual property, but the group ended up gathering military information like social security numbers and even the date of births. Another great example of this is listed in an article written by Christian Berthelsen, Matt Day, and William Turton titled “Capital One Says Breach Hit 100 Million Individuals in the U.S.” written in Bloomberg. The article references the Capital One Financial Group breach that recently happened, the article reports that 100 million users were affected. The article goes on to report that the breach was by a Seattle woman who accessed the bank’s servers, the breach took place through Amazon Web Services. The Seattle women was an employee of Amazon Web Services. The two examples listed show the immense risks of emerging technology like cloud services.
Smart-phones, smart fridges, smart led lights, smart thermostats, smart toasters, smart scales, smart-watches, even smart speaks all have a place in a lot of people’s homes. The internet of things is a rapidly growing new emerging technology. Jen Clark’s article on IBM titled “What is the Internet of Things?” does a really good job of giving a simple explanation of the Internet of Things. Clark’s IBM article voices that the Internet of Things is in its essence “the concept of connecting any device (as long as it has an on/off switch) to the internet and to other devices” (par 1). The IBM article goes on to express that the Internet of Things is a “giant network of connected things and people all of which collect and share data about the way they are used and about the environment around them” (par 1). The Internet of Things has now opened an information highway, where very sensitive and detailed data is shared. Biometric data, shopping data, even geographic data is just the iceberg of sensitive information that is being shared because of the Internet of Things. Things like the IWatch and smart scales gather incredibly private data like vitals, heart rate, BMI scores, body fat percentages, bone density info, and even muscle mass. The gravity and potential danger of the Internet of Things technology is perfectly shown in a recent incident that was reported by the Telegraph. James Titcomb from The Telegraph wrote an article titled “Pirates turn to online hacking to plunder ships” where he reports that experts at Verizon discovered that pirates hacked into their management systems (par 3). The pirates according to The Telegraph injected code into the management system, so at a later time, the pirates can extract information like shipping routes (par 3). The pirates used the corrupted management system to pinpoint the most valuable shipments and intercept them (par 5). So, for obvious reasons listed the Internet of Things can pose a serious cyber threat.
Lastly, another emerging technology that can pose a serious cyber threat is the advent of 5G. PCmag has an article written by Sascha Segan titled “What is 5G” in which Segan does a good job of breaking down what 5G actually is. The “G’s” in 5G and 4G, according to the PCmag, represents a new generation of transmitting technology on our phones. The original 1G allowed us to transmit sound, 2G allowed us to transmit texts, 3G allowed us to use the web, 4G made things significantly faster about 10 times as fast, and now 5G is even faster than 4G. 5G is again almost 10 times faster than 4G and 5G even allows for a nearly zero latency rate according to PCmag. Eventually, according to PCmag, 5G is expected to communicate in nearly real-time with lag being just a millisecond. A lot of new risks rise with the introduction of 5G, especially considering the increased bandwidth will be able to support such a large amount of IoT devices. Malwarebytes LABS’s article titled “How 5G could impact cybersecurity strategy” written by Kayla Matthews explains the risk of 5G so well. In the article Kayla Matthews references a dangerous denial-of-service attack that wiped out the internet on the United States east coast. According to the article, the Mirai botnet was responsible for the attack. The Mirai botnet was created by a person trying to take down rival Minecraft servers. The Mirai botnet utilized thousands of non-secure IoT devices which included security cameras. With emerging technology like 5G more and more IoT devices will be available for hackers to pinpoint security vulnerabilities.
New and emerging technology has the ability to fundamentally reshape our existence. With emerging technology holding that much power, the question arises if it will be safe. AI-generated fake video and audio, poisoning AI defenses, hacking of smart contracts, using quantum computers to break encryption, launching attacks from the computing cloud, using the Internet of Things to pinpoint vulnerabilities, and 5G enabling more Internet of Things devices are all examples of potential cyberthreats with new and emerging technology. Recognizing the dangers of new and emerging technology is a step in the right direction in protecting humanity from disastrous cyberthreats.