InfoWorld - Security Adviser: Evil conspiracy? Nope, everyday cyber insecurity

You don't need crackpot conspiracy theories to foretell a wide-scale security cataclysm. Mundane vulnerabilities increase the probability every day

By Roger A. Grimes
Jul 14, 2015

Last Wednesday, the world's largest stock exchange went down for half a day, the world's fifth-largest airline grounded its planes for a few hours, and The Wall Street Journal's home page went missing, all within a few hours of each other.

No wonder speculation was rife that a large-scale cyber attack was under way. But by the end of the day the Department of Homeland Security had declared unequivocally that this triple threat was merely a coincidence -- random outages that happened to fall on the same day. I believe it.

Part of the reason I accept this explanation is because the damage was so minimal. A coordinated, widespread cyber attack that went far beyond last week's mini-debacle could be executed at will by any hackers seeking to make a great big point. It would not take uber-skilled hackers to accomplish. A few kids could do it using readily available hacking tools to target the abundant vulnerabilities nearly every company decides to live with as a part of the cost of doing business.

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