Cybersecurity

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 Cybersecurity

The history of cybersecurity almost started with the development of the internet. In the

early 1940s, John Von Neumann already predicted the idea of computer viruses but it only

materialized 30 years later. The word cybersecurity started with the discovery of the computer

virus on March 16, 1971, named Creeper. It was discovered during the early stages of the

ARPANET when the users of the network were surprised to see the message “ I’m the creeper,

catch me if you can” on their screens. The users had no idea where the message came from and

what to do with it. Creeper is a worm (a virus that self-replicates and spread to other systems).

Although the worm successfully replicated itself, all it was able to do was display the phrase,

thus it was not so harmful at that time.

On September 20, 1983, The first patent for cybersecurity in the US was granted to MIT for their

project cryptographic communications systems and method. This methodology made used of the

Rivest-Shamir-Adleman algorithm to come up with the first public-key cryptosystems.

On June 9, 1993, The First DEF CON Conference was conducted in Las Vegas attended

by around 100 participants. The conference discusses cybersecurity technical issues. The conduct

of the conference continued until today where almost 20,000 cybersecurity professionals attend.

The Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) 2.0 was introduced in February 1995. The security

protocol allows the conduct of certain online transactions like purchasing items in a secure

manner and through the use of the SSL. Netscape was the first browser to make use of it and also

introduce the HyperText Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS). Today, when HTTPS is included in

a web address, you are ensured the all communications that pass through the website are

encrypted.
 The first universally know hacker group named anonymous was discovered on October 1,

2003. The group is like an open-source system composed of several offline and online

communities but with no definite leader. They work together in is making several attacks. They

were discovered when the group hacked the website of the Church of Scientology via DDoS

attacks. Today, the group still exists.

Another milestone in cybersecurity is the existence of Operation Aurora that began on

January 12, 2010. This is realized when Google announced that its infrastructure located in

China was attacked by “Operation Aurora”. The attack’s main intent was to identify the Chinese

operatives that are located in the United States who are possibly on the watch list of the United

States law enforcement agencies. The attack also affected numerous companies including

companies operating using the internet, media, finance, and technology sectors.

Today, there are still massive breaches that have affected big companies like Target,

Equifax, Marriott, and Yahoo to name a few. Thus, cybersecurity has been a major area of

discussion and security measures have been heightened. There have been thousands of breaches

that have occurred and affected companies regardless of their sizes. For example, the production

of malware has exploded in the last decade. It is estimated that today there are already a billion

pieces of malware that have been developed and these are continuously rising because programs

that can control this malware cannot catch up with their reproduction rate (Chadd, 2020).

In 2020, the pandemic has forced several companies to resort to the web for the

continuous operations of their companies, however, these companies were also forced to enhance

their cybersecurity to ensure safe and successful transactions online. The latest known massive

breach in 2020 involved the SolarWinds Orion Platform where a cybersecurity company
FireEye where SolarWinds update infrastructure systems were poisoned. The attack was only

discovered in the late 2020s however, research shows that it has already started as early as mid of

2019.

The complexity of the cyberattacks has come a long way since the discovery of the first

virus. Whenever technology is discovered to combat a cyber attack there seems to be a net

technology implemented to attack. Cyber attackers seem to be always a step ahead, thus until

today, there is no specific cure to ensure cybersecurity.

 References

Chadd, K. 2020. “The History of Cyber Security.” Retrieved on 21 April 2021 from

https://blog.avast.com/history-of-cybersecurity-avast#:~:text=Cybersecurity%20proper

%20began%20in%201972,protocols%20for%20remote%20computer%20networking.