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- Trend snippet: Several cyber-attacks targetic strategic national interests attributed to state-sponsored organisations
Trends in Security Information
The HSD Trendmonitor is designed to provide access to relevant content on various subjects in the safety and security domain, to identify relevant developments and to connect knowledge and organisations. The safety and security domain encompasses a vast number of subjects. Four relevant taxonomies (type of threat or opportunity, victim, source of threat and domain of application) have been constructed in order to visualize all of these subjects. The taxonomies and related category descriptions have been carefully composed according to other taxonomies, European and international standards and our own expertise.
In order to identify safety and security related trends, relevant reports and HSD news articles are continuously scanned, analysed and classified by hand according to the four taxonomies. This results in a wide array of observations, which we call ‘Trend Snippets’. Multiple Trend Snippets combined can provide insights into safety and security trends. The size of the circles shows the relative weight of the topic, the filters can be used to further select the most relevant content for you. If you have an addition, question or remark, drop us a line at info@securitydelta.nl.
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Several cyber-attacks targetic strategic national interests attributed to state-sponsored organisations
- Including new economic threats and the risk of destabilising a country's economy
Over recent months, several cyber-attacks targeting strategic national interests were attributed to APT groups close to state-sponsored organisations (China, North Korea, Russia, etc.). National elections have also been the subject of great speculation. Before the election of 4 November 2020, observers considered that Russia remained the main cyber-threat to the American presidential election. In the battle for influence which an election represents, all it takes is an item of fake news or a deepfake to win or lose votes. Or a tweet. The hacking of Donald Trump’s Twitter account might open the way to a new form of hacktivism: that of making fake public statements. The rise of electronic voting is also of concern as in November 2020 once again, a flaw in a supercomputer’ AI disrupted the counting of votes in Brazil’s municipal elections.
This is without counting new economic threats and the risk of destabilising a country’s economy. In November 2020, the Cigref (the Association for large French companies and government organisations) sent a letter to the Prime Minister at a time when attacks targeting major French companies had increased in both number and intensity. “They are increasingly affecting public or private organisations and are a growing threat to the economy”, stressed the note.
During the first half of 2020, the water industry in Israel was the target of several series of cyber-attacks. In April, the IT network of a water pumping station was infected by malware program aimed at affecting the water pump controllers. The objective: to increase the quantity of chlorine in the water. Such an attack could have resounding mechanical or human effects. The Financial Times went as far as to give this the evocative title “Cyber winter is coming”.