Well, what can we say about 2020 so far? Between a deadly pandemic whose reach and scale is unprecedented in our lifetimes, the corresponding global economic downturn, geopolitical strife around the world, and widespread civil rights uprisings, the first six months of the year have been remarkable in every way. And all of this has had a profound impact on cybersecurity dynamics and risks, not to mention digital attacks.
So much has happened in cyberspace over the past six months that it’s daunting to think what the back half of the year will bring. For now, let’s reflect on the major hacks and breaches that have occurred so far, as we steel ourselves for whatever is coming.
Covid-19 has changed the way people around the world live, work, and learn, which in turn has had a large impact on how hackers craft their attacks and which vulnerabilities they target. The pandemic is a boon to nation-state spies conducting digital espionage; it has also fueled state-backed phishing, criminal hacking, and all manner of scams.
One unnerving target of attacks by elite hackers has been governments and international organizations working on pandemic response. The World Health Organization, for example, was targeted in March by unknown attackers who bombarded the organization with phishing messages in an attempt to access its digital systems. In April, Iran-linked hackers were caught launching phishing attacks against the pharmaceutical company Gilead Sciences, which has been working to develop and distribute treatments for Covid-19.
Scams and digital extortion attempts like ransomware have also flourished globally during the pandemic. In the US, states nationwide have scrambled to address rampant unemployment fraud coming from overseas and draining the crucial social safety net at a dire moment.
The Chinese government has been subjecting the country’s Uighur ethnic minority to increasingly invasive digital surveillance and hacking for years. As far back as 2013, state-backed hackers worked to develop spyware and web
