The Illusion of Security

Be honest. When you lay your head on the pillow at night, you feel safe because you locked your door, because you set your alarm. You believe your money in the bank is protected by passwords, that your health records at the hospital are confidential, that the state with all its immense power is protecting you.

Bad news. What you feel is not security. It is only an illusion.

The world we live in today is no longer protected by steel doors or concrete walls. Our modern civilization sits on a digital network that hangs by a thread, invisible, silent, and under constant attack. And in the dark corners of this network, there are structures with more power over your life than a head of state.

Forget the Hollywood cliche. The hooded hacker living in a basement, disconnected from social life. That is history now. What we are talking about today goes far beyond the word hacker. We are talking about massive criminal holdings with CEOs, human resources departments, PR teams, annual leaves, bonus systems, and even customer service.

December 23, 2015. Ukraine. A freezing cold outside. People were making Christmas preparations at home. At a power plant's control room, an operator thought he was having an ordinary boring shift. Then something strange happened.

The mouse cursor on his screen began to move on its own. The operator moved his mouse, but the cursor did not obey. As if an invisible hand had grabbed the mouse.

The operator watched in horror as that invisible hand began clicking on the circuit breakers on the screen. And then the city lights went out. Thousands of homes, hospitals, schools were plunged into pitch darkness and freezing cold.

The operator tried to intervene in the system, but his keyboard was locked. The attackers had not only cut the electricity. They had also deleted the software that allowed operators to restore the system. They even sent thousands of fake calls to the plant's telephone exchange to prevent citizens from reporting faults.

This was Sandworm. Unit 74455 of Russian Military Intelligence, the GRU.

This event was significant because it was one of the first cases in world history where a hacker group so clearly targeted a country's power grid and caused widespread collapse. This was a turning point.

Until that day, there had been fear of a scenario called Cyber Pearl Harbor. Sandworm brought this nightmare scenario closest to reality. War was no longer just at the front lines. It was in the server rooms of power plants.

But this was not Sandworm's masterpiece. What places them at the top is NotPetya, history's most devastating cyberattack with 10 billion dollars in global damage.

In 2017, the target was again Ukraine, but this time the method was much more insidious. In Ukraine, there was a widely used software called MeDoc for filing tax returns. Sandworm had infiltrated this software company's servers months earlier and waited.

When the company sent a security update to all users, Sandworm hid their malicious code inside that update. Think about it. Your computer says there is an update. You install it because you think it is safe. And you open the back door with your own hands.

When the virus entered the system, it appeared to demand ransom like ordinary ransomware. The screen said: Your files are encrypted. Pay 300 dollars in Bitcoin.

But the terrifying truth soon emerged. This was not ransomware. It was a wiper. There was no decryption mechanism. Even if you paid, your files would not come back. The software had only one purpose. To completely and irreversibly destroy every disk it entered.

The attack targeted Ukraine, but the internet has no borders. The virus spread globally through the internal networks of multinational companies with offices in Ukraine.

Maersk, the world's largest shipping company, saw its systems collapse within minutes. Cranes at ports stopped. Ships could not unload cargo. Thousands of trucks lined up at gates. The company that handles approximately twenty percent of world trade logistics was suddenly crippled.

Pharmaceutical giant Merck, shipping giant FedEx, food giant Mondelez were all hit. Total global damage was recorded as a bill approaching 10 billion dollars.

This was the effect of a cyber nuclear bomb.