Would you be comfortable living in a house
that someone else had the key to? What if an underground tunnel led into it
from a public park, or its windows could never quite close all the way? Would you trust it with your safety and your
privacy? The internet is that house. This is not to say—never go into the house,
but rather, you should know the hazards before you store all of your valuables there—and
do what you can to protect them. So why is it insecure, and why can’t we
just fortify it until it’s safe? Well, first of all, the internet was not originally
built to be what it is today. It’s like someone decided to expand a shoebox
into a skyscraper. The internet originally developed when computers
were huge and so expensive to own that only universities, big businesses, and a few governments
had them. The point, originally, was to let these massive
supercomputers talk to each other. And as soon as two computers could send information
back and forth, we had a network. The network gradually grew, until personal
computers emerged in the 1980s, and then it exploded. Soon people were not just talking to each
other, but also exchanging money, playing games, reading news, shopping, and doing everything
we associate with the internet today. Other devices started talking to the network
too—phones, and cars, and refrigerators, and elevators and power plants, and much much
more. But the ease of all of those devices talking
to each other came at a price: security. One computer could send another instructions
to delete everything on it or take it over—we call these viruses and malware. Or one person could steal another’s identity
by guessing, cracking, or extracting a password. Vulnerabilities such as these will never completely
go away, because they’re built into the internet’s very architecture. Criminals use them to steal billions of dollars,
governments use them for surveillance, and hacktivists use them to further their political
goals. Between 2004 and 2013, over 1 billion records
of personal information were stolen or leaked through data breaches of major organizations. As a thought experiment, let’s imagine what
a perfectly secure internet might look like. Users would not be allowed to download or
install anything onto their computers. All internet traffic would be monitored and
regulated by bots and humans, massively limiting the number of websites you could visit. In order to log onto a website you’d have
to type in a 100 character password, submit a genetic sample, and whistle a tune. The servers that hold data would be kept in
heavily armed fortresses... on the moon. And even with all of these safeguards in place,
some clever hacker would almost certainly still find a way in. The good news is, even with our flawed internet,
there are simple things you can do to protect yourself, and there are a lot of people committed
to making the internet more secure. In NOVA’s Cybersecurity Lab, you‘ll play
as one of these people, protecting a company that is the target of increasingly sophisticated
cyber attacks. You must continuously strengthen your defenses
in order to thwart these attackers. You will do this by completing challenges
that will give you basic coding abilities, help you spot scams designed to trick you
into giving up your secrets, and teach you how passwords are cracked and strengthened. The house that is the internet may be built
on a shaky foundation, but it’s been a home to innovation and an unprecedented free exchange
of ideas. It’s up to us to make it livable in spite
of its flaws.
