Jun

16

The web is a scary place, dude.

Filed Under The Internet And Technology, commentary 

I was talking with my dad on Sunday. He’s worked in corporate security for a number of years and recently retired, electing to go solo and open his own company doing what he did for ‘the man’ for so many years.

He recently attended an internet security conference and came back with some scary information.

One of them is regarding China. China is sneaky, and frankly they scare me more than any terrorist organization in the world today. China already is buying up America piece by piece and accommodating American companies who wish to get cheap labor. Now, there is a rumor that there were at least 5 routers found in Washington that were made in China and were sending sensitive information passed through them back to China, unbeknown by our government agencies. China also has the source code to Microsoft’s Windows operating system; something the government insisted on having before Microsoft could sell their products in the country.

They have the technology and the know how to come in, strike, and you wouldn’t know it until it was over.

Imagine the power of being able to turn off a country’s power grid, launch missiles, deactivate nuclear power plants, cripple banks and disable communications across a country? Does that scare you? It scares the crap out of me.

But we continue to send our sensitive data overseas through the internet. In my opinion, that’s like sending your 2 year-old kid to walk down the street and hoping it’s going to make it to Grandma’s house a few miles away. So many things could happen with your sensitive data, yet more and more companies who sell products in America are opting to send your data overseas through the internet and satellite. Why?

The presenters at the conference painted a bleak picture for us. Not only could China cripple us at any moment, but others are gaining that knowledge day by day. Every day we inch closer to the internet apocalypse. It’s not a matter of if … but when this all will happen, and I for one am petrified.

Did you know that daily, there are 20,000 legitimate new viruses that are born online? There are viruses that sit on your PC and beacon back to places, letting them know that they are ready to execute their creators’ commands, and they are virtually undetectable. How safe are you, really?

The interweb ain’t just for email and pictures anymore.

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