Vocal Voices

Yesterday there was an attack on some Internet services which brought sites like Amazon in the US to a screeching halt as far as users are concerned. No Amazon itself was not either attacked or penetrated, but users couldn't use it so it might as well have been.

Today analysts tell us that IOT (Internet of things) devices were used, pretty much for the first time. Tens of millions of them.

I have three of these active but have changed their security so that it's my password they are using. Many people do not do that, they just use what it came with.

My BIL tells me he just uses his phone with a "web printing service" which his printer is subscribed to. Pretty much exactly the kind of device used.

Reality is a harsh mistress and life is going to be like this in the future. Change the password on your Fridge/Washing machine, when you buy it, or risk having it taken over by a malicious internet Trojan.

How life changes.

When I was reading the articles I got to thinking that we need to get working really hard on this intelligence of the artificial kind because we humans seem to be losing ours faster than you can say "Bot!".

Wall-E world is approaching at warp speed. Sit back, relax, watch holo-TV, get fat and let the bots do everything for you.

But seriously, the Internet was set up to allow machines to talk to each other: one to all; all to one, one to one, one to many; many to one; many to all. It was never really envisaged to be as large as it is today. Back in the early days everything was done manually and with cables. The cables had to be the right ones with the right connectors, both ends had to be told how to 'talk' to each other. Get one bit wrong and the whole thing failed. Nowadays a lot of it is pre-programmed and automatic, and as we all know, cables are not always required.

These attacks are a timely reminder to all budding 'futureologists' out there not to leave everything to be run by everything else and also that if there is a way out there is also a way in.