There's enough to be worried about in 2024 without looking to the doom and gloom of the future (if we ever get that far). With everyone from long-dead mystics to Stephen Hawking predicting the end of days, what's the point in saving for a rainy day if there isn't going to be one? Still, one internet hacker with over 30 years of experience has warned about what we need to look out for in our own glum futures.
The former hacker has abandoned their love of disruption and has turned three decades of experience in lurking on the dark web and ruining lives into a career in cybersecurity. If anyone knows the perils of the internet and its seedy underbelly, it's him. In a resurfaced interview with VICE, the anonymous hacker explained what we all need to be worried about in the future.
Discussing what's next, he said: I don’t think we have to worry too much about our nuclear arsenal being taken over movie style and used against us.
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"But I do think we have to worry about things like major impacts to financial markets or potential impacts to things like electricity production facilities."
Saying that there's something known as the Initial Access Broker market that sells access to compromised companies, he sees it as a problem that's only going to get worse.
He says that the problem is that we're reactive rather than proactive. We'll wait until a security flaw is exposed and an attack happens instead of shoring up our defenses in the first place.
In terms of what companies can do, it's a worrying state of affairs where he concluded: "It's challenging to deal with a situation where the bad guys are essentially moving faster than the good guys. The nature of the problem is that the advantage is always with the bad guy."
He warns that literally anything connected can be used as a device to hack into somewhere, and given how connected we all are in 2024, we're dooming ourselves. Instead of needing millions to disrupt like back in the day, he says it takes a couple of thousand dollars and a laptop to cause some serious havoc.
Thankfully, there's one less hacker we need to worry about because while this mystery man was previously a 'Black Hat' hacker who wasn't bound by any ethical code, he now sees himself as a 'White Hat' hacker who works to improve things. As he says he's known to hunt cyber criminals who target the likes of hospitals, it shows how scary and how real these attacks can be.
If one of the guys who used to be a bad guy thinks our wars will be fought on the battlefield of the internet instead of through nuclear warfare, we'd better start paying attention.