The world of computer security is living through its darkest hours. With two major ransomware campaigns in 45 days, authorities that insist on intercepting or destroying encryption systems, companies that lose millions of dollars in productivity, and users left completely unprotected, it is hard to imagine a positive future. Deep changes are needed, both legally and technologically, and until that happens, the CEO and co-founder of Cyberghost, Robert Knapp, recommends treating everything we do and say online as if it were public material.
The Enemies of the Network
On one side, we have politicians in positions of power who know absolutely nothing about the Internet, and yet they seek to regulate or intervene in its functioning. Then come the intelligence agencies, which in the name of “national security” accumulate exploits and vulnerabilities for years. Third, we find corporations that refuse to carry out public audits of their main products (you know, “proprietary code”), and automatically become victims when their systems are attacked. The group is rounded out by all connected users, who despite fear and uncertainty place their trust day after day in multiple platforms. The situation is not good; the enemies of the network are winning, and “pulling the plug” is an increasingly tempting option for the average user...
Why Privacy Is So Hard to Guarantee
Why does this happen? Robert Knapp, CEO and co-founder of Cyberghost, explains that things are much simpler for attackers. No longer is deep knowledge or an elaborate budget required to launch an attack. It all comes down to exploits that take advantage of backdoors created by developers' mistakes, or kept secret (and unreported) by agencies such as the NSA. One possibility would be to apply encryption technologies to everything, but the problem of backdoors persists, because we do not know whether Facebook, Google and the rest have something similar in their code, or whether they cooperate with authorities. To that we must add the legal war that several governments have started against encryption. One of the latest surveillance laws approved in Germany unambiguously authorizes the use of malware to access the content of services such as WhatsApp and Skype.
What Must Change
According to Knapp, the only way forward is through legislative processes. Ransomware cannot be stopped if there is no legal framework that makes encryption the standard, and at the same time, all laws that allow a government to accumulate and use backdoors must be repealed. Until that happens, everything we do online has to be interpreted as public material, since “there is no way” to guarantee privacy.
Source: The Next Web
