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What is a cyberattack and what can we do to protect ourselves online?
April 6, 2022
Cyberattacks are nothing new. According to the FBI, the first major “attack on the internet” predated even the web — a self-replicating malicious program created by a grad student who shortly apologized with instructions to remove it. While the software didn’t damage or destroy any files, it spread, within 24 hours, to about 6,000 of the 60,000 computers that were connected to the internet at the time. It slowed down university and military operations and delayed email for days. The apology that contained the fix reached few people in time.
To say that our lives have become more dependent on the internet since the Morris worm of 1988 would be an understatement. A cyberattack can disrupt fuel supplies by shutting down the largest pipeline in the U.S. It can cut electricity for entire regions. It can disable computers at hospitals. No wonder cyberattacks have become destructive tools during international conflicts like the Russia-Ukraine war.
With cyberattacks making headlines, we turned to Mozilla’s chief security officer to shed some light on the role of cybersecurity during the Russia-Ukraine war. Marshall Erwin has worked in cybersecurity for two decades, spending the first five years of his career in the CIA’s counterterrorism center. He also spent some time working on cybersecurity policy issues in the U.S. Congress before taking the lead on trust and security at Mozilla seven years ago.
First, let’s define a cyberattack
A cyberattack is an effort to target a computer network or remotely cause damage, whether that’s stealing information like credit card numbers or disabling systems. Everything from the websites we visit and the devices we use to our communications online are vulnerable.
“That’s sort of the crux of the cybersecurity problem that we face today,” Marshall says. “Everything is so connected that everything is a little bit more vulnerable than it was before to cyberattacks.”
What about cyberwarfare and cyberterrorism?
A cyberattack deployed by a nation state against another nation state as an act of war constitutes cyberwarfare, Marshall says.
It becomes cyberterrorism when it’s politically motivated. “The use of cyber might become clear early on in that investigation, but a tie to terrorism may not reveal itself for days, weeks, or months, if ever. From that perspective, the term ‘cyber terrorism’ isn’t always immediately clear,” according to the Office of the Direction of National Intelligence.
“It’s all many of the same techniques,” Marshall explains. “It’s just being applied in different circumstances.”
What Mozilla is doing to protect its users
Cybersecurity is always a top priority. But with Russia being a country known to have sophisticated cyber capabilities that any company has to be mindful of, Mozilla has put additional resources into making sure all security protections are in place to avoid getting hacked.
“We have always been very mindful of a whole host of hackers or parties that might seek to compromise our systems, but the risk to us is greater today than it was a month ago because of the nature of the conflict,” Marshall says. “Western technology companies have aggressively moved to disengage from Russia in a way that I think is going to increase the risk to all of us, of Russia also becoming more aggressive against Western technology companies.”
The Firefox team is constantly looking for bugs or vulnerabilities and fixing them so that running the software won’t make devices open to hacking.
Mozilla is also actively protecting itself as a company. “If someone hacks into Mozilla, they can try to exploit or create vulnerabilities in our product,” Marshall says.
What we can all do to protect ourselves from cyberattacks
News about cyberattacks can be worrisome, but Marshall suggests focusing on the basic things we can all do to protect ourselves online.
“If you’re using strong passwords, a password manager and multifactor authentication, you’ve done the baseline that every good cybersecurity expert does,” Marshall says.
So sure, the power of the internet over our lives has grown exponentially. But we, as internet users, have become a lot more powerful too. We just need to take extra care.
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