Crime

Many organizations in Europe and the US have been crippled by a ransomware attack known as “Petya”. The malicious software has spread through large firms including the advertiser WPP, food company Mondelez, legal firm DLA Piper and Danish shipping and transport firm Maersk, leading to PCs and data being locked up and held for ransom.

Donald Trump signed an executive order on cybersecurity last month, outlining plans to address the cybersecurity of federal networks, the cybersecurity of critical infrastructure , the cybersecurity of the nation as a whole, and how to ensure that the United States achieves long-term excellence in cybersecurity.

HIS last Facebook post was the only clue of Raed Jaradat’s yearning for vengeance: it showed a Palestinian teenager lying dead with her headscarf soaked in blood and the message “Imagine if this were your sister.” Dania Irsheid had been shot by Israeli security forces in October 2015 at the entrance to the Ibrahimi mosque.

AFTER last weekend’s terrorist attack in London Theresa May, declared that “enough is enough.” She was not suggesting that some reasonable amount of terrorism had now been exceeded; rather, that extremism had been too readily tolerated in the past. She specifically criticised the big internet firms.

THREE jihadist attacks in Britain in as many months have led to a flood of suggestions about how to fight terrorism, from more police and harsher jail sentences to new legal powers. But one idea has gained momentum in both Europe and America—that internet firms are doing the jihadists’ work for them.

TO HELP shield their products from ransomware like the recent worldwide WannaCry attack, most big software-makers pay “bug bounties” to those who report vulnerabilities in their products that need to be patched. Payouts of up to $20,000 are common.

The cyber threat goes beyond hijacking computers. It’s about economics, politics, power and human psychology.

The “WannaCry” mass ransomware attack that disrupted the NHS and other organisations around the globe has refocused attention on the issue of cybersecurity; on the role of nation state actors (in this case the US National Security Agency, or NSA) in creating “exploits” that can fall into the wrong hands; and on the internet marketplaces where such exploits can be traded.

IT SOUNDS like a Hollywood disaster film. A group of hackers use a stolen cyber-weapon to try to extort money from people worldwide. The attack cripples hospitals, causing ambulances to be diverted and operations to be cancelled.

Think of it like a wine club, they said — but for cyber weapons. On Tuesday, as the world was reeling from the impact of WannaCry, one of the most virulent cyber attacks in internet history, the group that began it all took a moment to relish what it had wrought.