In case you tried logging into Twitter on October 21st and failed, it wasn’t your fault. Apparently a cyberattack took down a server, creating a domino effect across the web. After a bit of digging around it looks like you might have trouble paying with a Visa card, or visiting a large number of other sites. Looks like a major victory for cybercriminals.
Look, I can live without twitter, but the scoundrels also took out our mail host, so we could neither send nor receive mail at lucioledesign.com. Somehow our web site remained up, possibly because it’s distributed in case something like this happens.
Thank whatever, but Google was not obliterated by a sea of pinging static so the mail did go through on Gmail. A miracle.
It’s at times like this that we need to take a break, relax, regress to simpler times where the Internet was not the hub of everything.
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They managed to fix the server by the end of the day, and everything went back to normal… this time. Mail mails, pages load, everything is shiny.
However, things are not so shiny in cyberland. The perps claim that was just practice and they’re preparing something worse. Apparently they use infected household electronics connected to the ‘net, turning your cuddly online talking teddy bear into a cyberterrorist, your coffee pot into a raging brew of cyberpoison, your refrigerator into an internet deep freezer.
The bottom line is that even if everyone keeps their computers and phones virus and malware free, the internet can still be brought down by connected household items, and there’s nothing you can do except hope that someone can find a solution, and soon.
Of course, you still have to use common sense: each password should be long, complex and unique. Your computer’s firewall should be turned on. You should not blindly click on e-mails and install whatever they recommend. Type in critical addresses like banks directly into your browser instead of following an e-mail link that could take you to a phishing site. Learn to read the URL address line in your browser to check that you’re really where you think. All that will keep you safer. Until your refrigerator and other connected items turn like HAL to sew nationwide chaos.
We’ve come a long way from an operator plugging cables together to connect people on the phone, haven’t we?