HiddenText Ltd

Well what a fun year 2018 turned out to be. So much happened during the year, big hacks, discrete hacks and blatant lulz hacking.

At the beginning of the year, I sat down and wrote a tweet that eventually became a blog “my 2018 Predictions” (LINK).

In that blog I gave a list of things I thought would be important. In retrospective, was I right? how much did I get right.

bitcoin something

First up was bitcoin and more generally cryptocurrencies in general. One of my comments was

“I even think we could see the demise of a cryptocurrency completely”

and this very nearly came true and for some cryptocurrencies we did see them almost fail completely (I’m looking at you Electroneum). It is fair to say we have seen during 2018 a massive variance in pricing over the year. I have highlighted below some of the bigger stories that I think should backdrop 2018

Crypto-theft (LINK)

Blockchain everything (LINK)

Did he die or is this a heist? Where’s the password? (LINK)

nation state things

One thing is for sure, the media got to understand what “nation state attacks” were as well as the marketing teams of every major vendor.

However, I think I was off the mark in saying we would discover more cyber stuff. We certainly didn’t have an Assange-level breakout of tools. However, what we did see was the rise in awareness of what some of the methods looked like.

This is certainly going to continue to play out over the next years but I think the media will become bored with it, much in the same way the Huawei story (LINK) has slid into the back pages of the media.

bad .. Bigly bad .. stuff

Wow, how wrong was I with this one. Indeed, Donald Trump survived another year in politics without coming under cyber attack. However, with the Meuller investigation, I think data will come out about him. But, I will redeem myself here slightly with a tenuous win.

Personalised and will gain significant information about him.

How many books came out in 2018 from former employees doing tell-all stories about life inside the White House? That insider threat here was significant and has helped the public certainly sway vote.

Between these books, the general leak of information, and the leak to Axios (LINK) of his internal diary too, I think we need to remember that data leaks and attacks are not necessarily always digital.

ransomware again

2018 was a good year for ransomware in that it fell … 30% (LINK). Maybe this was helped by the decline in crypto pricing? Maybe this was also due to some of the high-profile arrests (LINK)? Maybe it was the industry wins to help takedown ransomware attacks and create repair tools (free ones too)?

Where we have seen a rise though is cryptojacking (LINK) to replace the method criminals are using to bolster their crypto wallets.

passwords again

Well I sure wasn’t wrong here now was I?

the top password at the end of 2018 will be 123456 as usual

(LINK) and yes .. that list still has some shockers in there.

What I did find interesting in 2018 was the rise in non-password technologies. Fingerprint recognition is almost a given on mobile devices, Microsoft is pushing Hello too … are we finally turning the corner? (LINK) or are we all doomed with some of the big dataset leaks? (LINK)

over hyped marketing bs

Sorry for those that get triggered by acronyms … but oh wow … GDPR is like some cyber version of Brexit! We just got fed up of hearing about it and in the end gave up trying to understand it. I really don’t think that 2018 was a great year for the cyber security industry, especially those that decided to shoe-horn in pretty much every acronym possible into their sales pitches. I was unfortunate enough to have been at an IT conference here in the UK which had a Blockchain Theatre. I think that title in it’s own right says it all. I don’t want to link to any vendors who have been guilty of this … but I will link to some stunt hacking that I think comes firmly under this title.

Taking over Twitter accounts without responsible disclosure (LINK)

PewDiePie printer hacker (LINK)

AI will not take over the world

I predicted that AI would still be in a pipeline – well I did get that bit wrong. Cyber Watson by IBM is a great piece of kit! However, I think the Verge covered it best in this piece (LINK)

2018 saw :

• the first deaths caused by self-driving cars;
• the Cambridge Analytica scandal;
• accusations that Facebook facilitated genocide in Myanmar;
• the revelation that Google helped the Pentagon train drone surveillance tools;
• ethical questions over the tech giant’s human-sounding AI assistant.

The research group AI Now described 2018 as a year of “cascading scandals” for the field, and it’s an accurate, if disheartening, summary.

However, I do think that machine learning / algorithms / AI are improving … but I just wish there was some clarification / honesty as to what really is AI and what is just marketing guff.

Conferences will still be cool

Well that was certainly true for 2018. I went to many conferences in 2018 and there were some brilliant ones out there. I’d name them, but I know people blush. However, I did also see some stinkers that do need calling out. If you say you have a “Cyber Zone” or “Tech Innovation Hub” and the main industry event is around “FinTech” or “Armed Services” then get the right companies in. I cannot believe that at a “Leading International Security Show” taking over much of Olympia London, the cyber zone consisted of 5 stands. Especially when you have drone demonstration areas and right next to it a stand with anti-drone tech. I so wanted to just go and push the button to bring all the drones down.

a robot won’t be doing my job

Well 2018 was an interesting job for robotics … but only by way of innovation. My job was certainly not taken over by robots. I did change jobs, but the Terminator didn’t take it over!

it’ll be ok

Well it’s now 2019 at the time of writing and so I guess we made it huh. We did it … but and I think this is quite and important one … mental health is important and conversations need to be had. We have lost people this year due to mental health issues, we have seen colleagues, friends and connections also suffer. For some, the daily fight is difficult and I think that we need to recognise that.

So I have a blog I’m doing at the moment with 2019 thoughts – what do you think should be in there?

Let me know in the comments below.

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