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This Is Not A Drill with Gavin Esler

The War in Your Living Room

This Is Not A Drill with Gavin Esler

Podmasters

News, Society & Culture, Politics

4.91.6K Ratings

🗓️ 12 January 2022

⏱️ 54 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

The digital Utopia we were promised has given us a desperately vulnerable world where we depend on a global internet with a billion badly-protected backdoors. Today’s cyber-war battlegrounds aren’t on bank servers or Government databases. They’re in your smart fridges, doorbells and security cameras. Arthur Snell traces a path from the first-ever co-ordinated cyber-attack (on Estonia in 2007) to a world of invisible weapons and relentless probing conflict – where hostile governments can target your own phone anywhere on earth. How do you defend democratic societies when everything has become a computer?  Want to support us, get episodes early and extra content? Support us on Patreon and back us from just £3 per month now. “As soon as we discover something convenient for our lives, we become dependent on it… We’re now as dependent on connectivity as we are on electricity.” – Mikko Hypponen “Most people just don’t understand how much their devices leak about them… We are all carrying tracking devices with us.” – Eva Galperin “You can’t see a cyber weapon on a military parade ground… Countries are putting billions into these weapons and nobody knows about them.” – Mikko Hypponen “Is it really wise for any country to establish a Νational Registry of Persons, and keep most of your personal data in one place?” – Ciaran Martin “We are turning everything into a computer… If it’s smart, it’s vulnerable.” – Mikko Hypponen DOOMSDAY WATCH was written and presented by Arthur Snell, and produced by Robin Leeburn – with assistant production from Jacob Archbold. Theme tune and original music by Paul Hartnoll. The group editor is Andrew Harrison. DOOMSDAY WATCH is a Podmasters production. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

I'm Arthur Snow. Welcome to Doomsday Watch.

0:07.0

So, in 2007, in May, the government decided to move a Soviet military statue from the

0:16.0

Talinsidia Center to a military cemetery. And overnight, riots broke out.

0:22.0

That Carolina Inge, an Estonian high schooler at the time,

0:26.0

later she would lead the Cybersecurity Department of her country's foreign affairs ministry.

0:31.0

But what started happening the next day is that from somewhere abroad and at the time we didn't know from where,

0:38.0

many services in Estonia started facing DDoS attacks.

0:43.0

Estonia is a country smaller than Wales known for its charming capital city and popularity with stack parties,

0:49.0

but it is also known for something else.

0:52.0

As a former Soviet territory that regained its independence in 1991,

0:57.0

it has a complex relationship with Russia. And in 2007,

1:02.0

it was the target of the world's first major coordinated cyber attack.

1:08.0

Mikko Hupinan was a young cyber security expert based 50 miles away in the Finnish capital Helsinki.

1:15.0

This was the bronze soldier attack.

1:18.0

The real world crisis, which then escalated and moved from the real world into the online world.

1:23.0

We here were watching very carefully and trying to provide as much help as we could by monitoring the attacks

1:29.0

and trying to isolate the IP ranges where they were coming from.

1:33.0

As a side note, it was very interesting that attacks were timed exactly to Moscow's business hours.

1:39.0

And at the time, the most crucial ones that affected the most lives were those of banks.

1:45.0

And those services became unavailable to citizens.

1:49.0

That time in Internet history showed us how quickly we had moved our services online

1:55.0

without realizing that if they suddenly don't work anymore because they are online,

...

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