Failures, Fires and Freaking Out

This week’s AWS outage, which took down many prominent websites and apps, is a reminder of how important the infrastructure that runs the internet is to our everyday lives. AWS runs about a third of the web, and its failure caused some airline problems, halted online shopping, delayed news dissemination, and kept people from playing their favorite games or watching Hulu. But it was a nonissue in the U.S. because it happened around 3 a.m. Eastern time, and the fix was rolling out before most people were awake and functioning.

All indications are that the problem was an internal error and not a hack. The speed of the recovery supports this conclusion. (More on hacking later.)

But let’s imagine it lasted longer. People would not have been able to buy their morning coffee because their ATM card or the payment processor might not work. People working remotely might not have been able to connect, leaving them out of work. Zoom was affected, so meeting would be canceled. Microsoft Outlook had issues, so business emails might not get through. Amazon deliveries were reportedly delayed by the outage, but imagine if truckers working for other companies couldn’t make deliveries or could not use their fleet cards to pay for fuel. In some locations, the 911 service might have failed, meaning calls for fire, police or EMS assistance might not get through.

And these are just a few of the ways an attack on the internet could harm our society and collapse our systems.

EMP versus a Cyberattack

For many years, I feared the effects of an EMP, or electromagnetic pulse weapon that went off over the center of the United States. These days, a massive multi-pronged cyberattack might be just as effective at disabling our electronic infrastructure, and it doesn’t require a ballistic missile, just some really smart guys hacking away in a bunker on another continent.

Alternatively, an enemy with a few truckloads of kamikaze drones could attack data centers and critical internet routers and switches, which may be the new strategic targets of the 2020s. Imagine the potential damage if a dozen Shaheed drones with 50-kilogram warheads hit a critical electrical substation. Now expand that to concurrent attacks targeting two or three dozen strategic locations, hitting both our electric grid and the internet infrastructure. Chaos would result.

How often do you reach for your phone? How many hours are you on it per day? I use apps for my alarm system, solar power system, security cameras, local weather, grocery shopping, news, email, secure texting, credit cards, flying my drone, shopping, ordering a pizza, booking an Uber, streaming music, monitoring my health, and controlling our Starlink, and I am not a heavy phone user compared to many. Both my wife and I also use online bill pay and watch various streaming services.

When that all disappears in the blink of an eye for a period of hours and then days, people will freak out.

No Data Lines Means No Food

Right now, there are concerns that the government shutdown will mean EBT cards don’t get funded on November 1, meaning some or all of the 42 million Americans on SNAP, won’t be able to buy their normal allotment of groceries. Some predict this could cause riots.

But if the EBT system were to be hacked, the results would be the same. If traditional credit card processors were shut down by hackers, it would affect more than the 42 million people on food stamps and more than just food. If the internet were shut down, every electronic method of payment would cease, from credit cards, debit cards, Venmo, PayPal, Cash App, Square, Zelle, and even cryptocurrencies could not be exchanged. No bills could be paid, and even if you walked into your bank and demanded to make a cash withdrawal, they could not give you money if their computers were down.

That’s how important the internet has become, and there is no backup system.

Coincidence versus Enemy Action

You may have heard that once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, and three times is enemy action. It’s been a few years since AWS was down, but there have been many major hacks and millions of small ones that target just a single individual, company, or municipality. How many of these hackers are private individuals and groups looking to make a few bucks (or a few bitcoins) and how many are state-sponsored? How many times are small hacks used to test an approach or to practice hacking a specific piece of equipment? You and I don’t know, and the FBI isn’t telling us.

Add to this the recent explosion at the munitions plant in Tennessee, which was important to the war effort, and the massive fire at the Chevron refinery in California, and you have to wonder, is this happenstance, coincidence or enemy action? When you consider that the Ukrainian military is attacking Russian refineries and Russian munitions plants, it raises the specter that maybe Russia wants us to get a little taste of our own medicine.

Do I have any proof of this? Of course not. It’s just speculation on my part. But you don’t have to have a PhD in mathematics to put two and two together. All I am saying is it looks suspicious. For example, I haven’t heard a good explanation for either accident, and the stories drop out of the news pretty quickly.

Hacks, fires, warnings of attacks, and the possibility of sleeper cells are all good reasons to keep your head on a swivel and stay prepared.