We ’ve already coveredthe insane case of a Taiwanese eating house menuthat serve as a successful point of percolation for hackers to enter the private computers of an unnamed oil company , so I wo n’t go into much more detail . However , there was a brief moment in the originalNew York Timesstory that deserve a quick shoutout here .
A security expert interview by the paper — and I should mention , for any other Joseph Conrad rooter out there , that he is namedKurtz , of all things — gag that hacker are effectively hiding in plain ken by apply proficient system of rules so routine they are all but unworthy of security assessment . These let in air conditioners , vend machines , and printers , not to cite the Chinese - made router that former White House counter - terrorist act advisor Richard A. Clarke was so piercing to discuss in his recent bookCyber War .
As the Times explicate , these “ on the face of it innocent devices — videoconference equipment , thermostat , vending machines and printer — often are delivered with the security mount flip off by nonpayment . Once hack have find a direction in , the devices offer them a place to blot out in manifest flock . ”
Indeed , it is rightfully absurd to think that hackers might someday gain ground admission to a hydroelectric dike or atomic power plant , for exemplar , or even to a metropolis ’s dealings coordination grid , by slipping in through an insecure Coke machine .
As this expert — our innovative - day Kurtz — suggests , “ The beauty is no one is looking there . So it ’s very easy for the adversary to hide in these piazza . ” As stupefied as this will vocalise , it ’s his use of the word adversary that seemed deserving highlighting . Why on earth would I write an full post about this ? Well , it ’s Sunday ; so far , at least , it ’s a irksome news day . But it ’s also because I ’m fascinated by the fact that the adversary come about to be the Hebraical verbal description ofSatan , aka God ’s “ superhuman adversary . ” It is literally one of the substance of Satan ’s name .
I require to emphasise right away that my interestingness in this is not actually spiritual — I am in no elbow room suggesting that hackers are some kind of Biblical scourge or that they ’re in conference with the non - existent boogeyman of Christianity — but I am nonetheless always intrigued when potentially religious metaphors sneak out into other , theoretically secular aspect of civilian life .
Like Freudian cutting , these short moments of shared imaging and vocabulary reveal theological bias or even pop superstitions in the midst of everyday life history , and they ’re worth noting .
In the specific caseful of the New York Times clause , we see a security department expert alarm by and on incessant lookout for some faceless “ adversary ” that has acquire up theme in the vulnerable object of everyday lifetime , those systems too frail to jib the intrusive temptation of a dark force , this haunting and uninvited Edgar Guest from elsewhere . In answer , our expert swear on detailed coding and debugging recitation , like a medieval rite of exorcism , in rules of order to rid these objects of the adversary that now possesses them .
The IT guy is here to see you ; fromThe Exorcist , courtesy Warner Bros.
My point is thus quite introductory and in all probability did n’t merit a station this long , but it ’s that the warfare against cyberpunk — that is , the war for securing our networked objects against outside threats — take on an air of almost Catholic dispossession . It is a fear of cursed object , each of which potentially hides a malevolent strength , and a paranoia about who — what dark influence at the edge of the world — is stress to fox its way past our most persistent outer guards in edict to exert ascendency over insufficiently protected systems or things and maintain them as weapons against us .
phrase only slenderly other than , in other words , it ’s as if description of cybersecurity bleed indistinguishably into the mental lexicon of religion , a quasi - medieval struggle against supernatural force essay to invade the earthly concern through vulnerable pores and blind spots . Like live in a distant village , where every superstitious object and daily practice is a likely windowpane through which malignant energies might slip in and take up mastery , cybersecurity now has to struggle with an explosion of possible incoming points for offender to do us harm .
Every printer , every vending machine , every air - conditioning unit : it ’s like The Sorceror ’s Apprentice gone dreadfully wrong , a black magic of the everyday lounge just out of sight beneath our human beings ’s legato and modern exterior .
The surety ’s expert ’s habit of the Holy Scripture “ adversary ” in the New York Times article was just one diminutive exemplar of where these vocabularies and attitude overlap . [ Gizmodo , New York Times ]
Lead effigy from Gustave Doré ’s exemplification for Paradise Lost , via Wikimedia
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