From Moore's Law to Moore's Outlaws

You must have heard of Moore’s law. Technically, it was an observation/ prediction made by Intel co-founder, Gordon Moore, way back in 1965 that the number of transistors on a microchip doubles about every two years (even as the cost of computers halved in the same period). But it’s held up for so long (except the 2 years period changed to 18 months), that it’s been called a “law”. The benefits are very visible: smaller, more powerful devices, affordable to all.

 

With all those benefits, a parallel thing emerged: there’s a piece of software for everything under the sun. Which brings its own set of risks, warns Marc Goodman in Future Crimes.

 

He cites many examples, but I’ll just list a few. In older times, if a burglar wanted to target a particular home, he’d look for “a pile of newspapers in front of the house or a porch light that remained off at night”. In Burglary 2.0, criminals search your postings on Facebook and Twitter to identify when you plan to be on vacation, and for how long. Really. Ok, you say you don’t post/tweet about such things. Sadly, that’s not enough. That picture you posted on Facebook or Instagram was geotagged (it had latitude and longitude data), which means the criminal knows you’re nowhere near home. He can then use Google Maps to identify all the streets and getaway routes near your home. So how is this all tied to Moore’s law? Well, that is what made the Internet hardware possible, the social media servers so cheap, the smartphone you used to take that photo possible, the sensors that geotagged the photo so tiny and inexpensive, and the server farms to run Maps so affordable for Google.

 

So you think you will just avoid all social media? That won’t work. Thanks to Moore’s law, everything is so cheap (or free) that we assume everyone is on social media. So if you won’t create an ID on Facebook, the cybercriminal will create an ID on your behalf. And use that to get in touch with your friends and contacts. Sound far fetched? It happened to the Secretary General of Interpol!

 

Thanks to Moore’s law, the likes of Google, Apple and Box offer to back up your data for practically free. Your credit card info lies with so many companies thanks to all those sites you filled it into. Which means if a criminal hacks into those companies, he has hit the motherlode. All the eggs are increasingly in one basket.

 

Another consequence of Moore’s law are the increasingly ubiquitous smart-everything devices – smart lights, smart fridges, smart TV’s, smart homes etc. Also known as the Internet of Things (IoT). IoT devices are cheap, and they’re increasingly everywhere. Unfortunately, that means if a hacker breaks into them, well he’s inside your home. But what could he do, you ask. Maybe he can unlock that smart door. Or turn on the microphone in Alexa devices to listen in on your home conversations. Or turn on the camera of that smart device to take photos of the home. Or use that smart meter reading to detect if nobody is home – a perfect time to rob. Welcome to Burglary 3.0. No wonder Goodman says:

“If ever there was a technology that embodied the butterfly effect, it is surely the Internet of Things.”

 

Ergo, Marc Goodman’s worrying lines:

“With Moore’s law come Moore’s outlaws – criminals, terrorists, hacktivists, and state actors who exploit technology at will… With all objects transforming themselves into computers and all computers run by code (software), these powerful new illicit actors clearly understand that if you control the code, you control the world.”