Commentary, Prepping & Survival

Here’s How a Massive Cyberattack Could Happen To Us

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By Daisy Luther

The Petya Ransomware attack hit globally, but one country, in particular, was devastated by it. The Ukrainian infrastructure was brought own by the attack, where the epicenter occurred, and now, experts are suggesting that it may have been deliberate and state-sponsored.

The ostensible purpose of all that damage was to make money — and yet there’s very little money to be found. Most ransomware flies under the radar, quietly collecting payouts from companies eager to get their data back and decrypting systems as payments come in. But Petya seems to have been incapable of decrypting infected machines, and its payout method was bizarrely complex, hinging on a single email address that was shut down almost as soon as the malware made headlines. As of this morning, the Bitcoin wallet associated with the attack had received just $10,000, a relatively meager payout by ransomware standards.

It leads to an uncomfortable question: what if money wasn’t the point? What if the attackers just wanted to cause damage to Ukraine? (source)

Ukrainian cybersecurity analysts view Ukraine as the primary target, and the Petya outbreak as just another strike in their ongoing cyberwar with organized and relentless hackers that the Ukrainian government has publicly linked to Russian state actors. “I think this was directed at us,” says Roman Boyarchuk, the head of the Center for Cyber Protection within Ukraine’s State Service for Special Communications and Information Protection. “This is definitely not criminal. It is more likely state-sponsored.”

As for whether that state sponsor was Russia, “It’s difficult to imagine anyone else would want to do this,” Boyarchuk says.

Boyarchuk points to the timing of the attack, just before Ukraine’s Constitution Day, which celebrates the country’s post-Soviet independence…

More technical clues support that theory, some Ukrainian security researchers say. Kiev-based Information Systems Security Partners, which has acted as a first responder for several recent waves of cyberattacks on Ukrainian companies and government agencies, says it has found evidence that sophisticated hackers quietly infiltrated the networks of at least some Ukrainian targets two to three months before they triggered the ransomware that paralyzed those organizations. (source)

Security specialist Matthieu Suiche said in a blog post that it wasn’t a “ransomware” attack intended to make money, and is instead a “wiper” sent to eradicate data.

The fact of pretending to be a ransomware while being in fact a nation state attack — especially since WannaCry proved that widely spread ransomware aren’t financially profitable — is in our opinion a very subtle way from the attacker to control the narrative of the attack. (source)

Forensic analyst Oleksii Yasinsky told Wired that the intent was not money, even though this presented as a ransomware attack.

Rather than just encrypting infected hard drives and demanding $300 in Bitcoin for the decryption key, in some cases it simply wiped machines on the same network, deleting a victim computer’s deep-seated master boot record, which tells it how to load its operating system. Yasinsky argues that this behavior indicates the attackers weren’t, in fact, trying to extort payments from those victims but instead wanted to cause maximum disruption. (source)

They wanted to cause maximum disruption. Now, isn’t that just about the scariest thought ever?

What if the US was hit by a similar cyberattack?

Let’s go a little further down this rabbit hole and imagine such an attack happening in the United States. Because, really, is it that far-fetched? In fact, is it possible that this is a dry run for a massive attack on the American infrastructure? Maybe they want to see what happens when they take down the essential systems of a modern country on a smaller scale first, in order to maximize the effects on a larger target.

Scary, but possible.

Everything we do revolves around computers these days.

Businesses keep their records there. Systems are automated there. It goes on and on. And with this particular virus, one expert said, “There IS NO KILL SWITCH.” It’s virtually unstoppable once it gets into a system and it eradicates everything.

You know how I’m always encouraging you to watch survival movies and read survival fiction to enhance your prepared mindset? Let’s use this real life scenario and wargame the situation based on the systems that were damaged in Ukraine and think this through.

Banking would be disrupted.

Many banks in Ukraine were hit by the attack, which means that people suddenly had no access to their money. Their credit and debit cards wouldn’t work and the ATMs were down.

In the United States, most folks use credit or debit as they go throughout their days. Gas pumps are set up to pay at the pump with your bank card. We think nothing of swiping our card at the grocery store or at lunch. We know we have money in there, and it’s less risky than carrying cash, in most folk’s minds.

But what if suddenly you couldn’t use your credit cards and debit cards? What if the ATM machines went dark and you couldn’t get any cash from them?

Imagine this happened when you were traveling on business, miles from home with a half empty gas tank. You wouldn’t be able to get a hotel room, get more fuel, get food – nothing at all unless you had cash on hand – and even if you DID have enough cash, there’d be other problems as you’ll see below.

You should always have enough cash and supplies on hand to manage for quite a while if commerce were to cease.

Gas stations would close.

In Ukraine, getting fuel was difficult.

Of course, it makes sense that getting gasoline would be pretty tricky. Most gas stations are set up as pay-at-the-pump, and if you have cash, you have to go inside, pay, and they reset the pump to allow you the allotted amount of fuel…on a computer.

As well, the gas pumps themselves are digital in just about every place I’ve been in the past few years. Unless you manage to find some anomaly of a gas station where everything is still manual, the fuel you had would be all you’d have until things reverted to normal.

Even if you could buy stuff, there might not be stuff to buy.

It wouldn’t take more than a day or two for the transport trucks to stop running, since the fuel wouldn’t be readily available. Since our stores use “just-in-time” inventory restocking, pickings would be thin within a week.

Here’s a breakdown of what would happen – and how fast it would happen – if the trucks stopped running.

Like I said, be prepped for this.

Business would be disrupted.

In Ukraine, the banks are offline, which means payment systems are also offline.

Most businesses link to banks to be able to take payments by debit or credit. Most people no longer carry around pockets full of cash, and even if they did, some businesses aren’t entirely equipped to take cash payments.

When I worked at a car dealership service department, half a lifetime ago, I recall getting the day off because we were utterly at a standstill when our systems went down. The technicians couldn’t do any kind of electronic repair (and let’s face it, these days, there’s a computer in your car controlling just about every aspect of its function), the advisers couldn’t invoice, no one could check to see if a job was covered under warranty…I’m sure that many other businesses are equally dependent.

Most retail businesses rely on the ability to scan items for the price and to track SKU numbers for inventory purposes. Their cash registers are inextricably linked to computers for both payment options, pricing, and inventory options. Commerce could grind immediately to a halt, which means, what you have on hand would be all you had until things were resolved. You could forget about getting goods or services.

With the banking systems inoperable, other systems would soon go down too.

Think about our day-to-day business. Most of us have things on autopay, like our mortgages, car payments, and other monthly recurring bills.

If the banking systems are completely shut down, then our automatic payments would also cease to work. This means that the businesses relying on those payments would immediately have a shortfall, something that could have long-term ramifications if the issue lasted for more than a few days. Once things came back online, there would be massive confusion and congestion as people tried to straighten out payments that didn’t go through.

Chaos.

Transportation could shut down.

In Ukraine, both the major airport in the capital and the national railway system were shut down.

An attack like this could hit travelers the hardest. Imagine being at an airport to catch a connecting flight, and then discovering all flights had been canceled. If the computer systems were all down, you wouldn’t be able to rent a car to drive the rest of the way, and you wouldn’t be able to get a hotel room without cash, and you wouldn’t be able to buy any food unless you had cash on hand for that.

Commuters who rely on transit like trains to get back and forth to work would be stranded and without ATM access, most would be without any options. This is why you must always have a Plan B to get home when you’re traveling, along with the appropriate gear and footwear to walk if necessary.

The grid would fail.

In Ukraine, the power grid went down across a broad swath of the country.

In an event like this, it isn’t out of the ordinary for the power to go out. Our grid is extremely susceptible to a malware attack and something called “cascading failure.”

…malware can induce what’s often referred to as a cascading failure. This is what caused the massive blackout that occurred in the Northeastern US and Canada back in 2003. An overgrown tree branch in Ohio touched a power line, which caused that section of the grid to overload and shut down. The electricity had to be transferred to other power lines, which in turn also became overloaded. This chain reaction continued until 55 million people were without power. (source)

This can begin to have broad ramifications very quickly:

Most homes are reliant on the grid for heat or cooling.
No lights.
No hot water.
Food in the refrigerator or freezer would begin to spoil.

All the basics of a long-term power outage would apply, multiplied by all of the other things going wrong at the same time. Always be ready for a two-week power outage at the bare minimum.

Water could become contaminated.

Without the systems that keep municipal water supplies treated and distributed, it wouldn’t take long for the water from the taps to become contaminated and unsafe to drink – if it still flowed at all. Buying water at the store would be difficult, if not impossible, for all the reasons mentioned above, and even if you could buy it, the supplies would run out very quickly as others realized the tap water was unsafe to consume.

Always be prepared with water storage, a plan to acquire more water, and a way to purify water.

Dangerous infrastructure systems could be at risk.

The Chernobyl nuclear plant lost its ability to monitor radiation with the usual computerized systems.

Because Chernobyl hasn’t already had enough issues. The plant is still not fully decommissioned after the horrible disaster in the 80s, and some people are still working there monitoring for radiation leaks. All systems have had to revert to manual ones due to the cyberattack.

The United States has 99 nuclear reactors in 30 states. 99 Chernobyls waiting to happen?

Photo Credit: USNRC

Hospitals could be affected.

In the US, two hospitals in Pennsylvania were forced to cancel surgeries due to the Petya cyberattack.

During a widespread attack in the United States, there is potential for our medical system to be severely affected. Without access to patient records, terrible mistakes could occur. Many patient monitoring systems are computerized. Some life support machinery is tied into the grid. And what happens if the grid-down situation outlasts the fuel for the generators?

In a situation like that, there wouldn’t be much medical help available for incidents that occur during the disaster. You must keep some first aid and longer-term care supplies on hand, as well as informational guides to help you deal with health issues and emergencies as they arise. Know how to back this up with natural remedies in the event the situation outlasts your commercial supplies.

With all of this, unrest would erupt fairly quickly.

If the situation only lasted for a few days, society certainly wouldn’t break down. But if it stretched into weeks and more people began running out of the basics, we’d begin to see unrest on a massive scale. Think about it – what wouldn’t YOU do to take care of your hungry children? Add to this the now-refugees stranded in airports and other travel centers across the country, with no supplies and no way to get home. It wouldn’t take long for the need to outstrip any governmental efforts to supply aid.

Long before such a thing ever occurs, you should protect yourself by keeping your mouth shut. No one needs to know that you’re stocked to the rafters and ready for a situation like this. Secondly, you need to be prepared to protect your home and family should things go sideways. Here’s an article I wrote about why preppers must be armed and ready for unrest.

Are you prepped for something like this?

Prepping is prepping is prepping.

This, like any other disaster, assumes certain things.

The grid could go down.
Emergency services and first responders may not be there.
What you have on hand is what you have with which to survive,
If you’re away from home, the trip back could be difficult.

Have you thought this through?

An attack like this could have very longterm effects because, as I mentioned above, once it gets into a system, it’s unstoppable. It wipes clean all the date, the information stored, the functions. It would take a long time to come back from that.

What are some other things that could be affected by a massive cyberattack on the US? How would you prepare for something like this? Share your thoughts in the comments section below.

Daisy Luther

Daisy Luther is a coffee-swigging, globe-trotting blogger. She is the founder and publisher of three websites. 1) The Organic Prepper, which is about current events, preparedness, self-reliance, and the pursuit of liberty on her website, 2) The Frugalite, a website with thrifty tips and solutions to help people get a handle on their personal finances without feeling deprived, and 3) PreppersDailyNews.com, an aggregate site where you can find links to all the most important news for those who wish to be prepared. She is widely republished across alternative media and Daisy is the best-selling author of 5 traditionally published books and runs a small digital publishing company with PDF guides, printables, and courses. You can find her on Facebook, Pinterest, Gab, MeWe, Parler, Instagram, and Twitter.

The average person has no clue how tied in we are to the grid. It truly is a scary thing when you think about it.
#thatswhyweprep!

Peace,
Todd

Agenda 21 is a blueprint for collective human sheeple management where everything is strategically and intentionally connected.
The “Divided We Fall, United We Stand” concept is a two edged sword.
What on one hand may save you, on the other may also equally be your demise.
Electronics has enlightened and liberated countless minds, but would also be the means of enslaving and killing billions.

I too think this cyber attack was some sort of test.

I found the words of this computer expert quite chilling.

“The aim of the latest attack appears to be disruption rather than ransom, said Brian Lord, former deputy director of intelligence and cyber operations at Britain’s GCHQ and now managing director at private security firm PGI Cyber.”
“My sense is this starts to look like a state operating through a proxy … as a kind of experiment to see what happens,” Brian Lord told Reuters on Wednesday.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-cyber-attack-idUSKBN19I1TD?il=0

Given that the software behind these ‘attacks’ is NSA-created, one has to wonder what role the US Deep State/NSA has in all this. False Flag attacks have been a mainstay of geopolitics and ‘justifying’ war (AKA profits for the military-industrial complex).

Daisy Luther says:

June 29, 2017 at 1:59 pm

One should definitely wonder that, Steve.

Reply

If you want to get a good picture of what could happen in the worst case scenario in case of an EMP or to a lesser degree a cyber attack, read “One Second After” and ” One Year After” by William R. Forstchen. It wouldn’t matter if you have all the gas stored up that you would ever need, if your car had any computer components in it. . .it wouldn’t work. You would have to have an older vehicle made before computer parts were installed.

Water, food (and ways to cook it), shelter, gas, firewood, guns, ammo, buckets (for hauling water for flushing toilets, so you don’t have to use stored drinking water), toilet paper, places to hunt and fish, smokehouse for storing/curing meat.
Bug-out-bag…bug-home-bag.
Turn off the TV and read about/study survival techniques now, so that you’re not in a total panic if and when a shtf situation actually happens. Thanks Daisy.
Dave.

I don’t know what else we can do, except to continue to do what we are preparing for now, the economy crashing. A malware attack would have a lot of the same impact, electronics shutting down, a quick shortage of food, water, prescription drugs, etc. We’ve discussed this and have decided, that we are as prepared as we can be for a possible malware attack. Preparing for other scenarios, economic collapse, society collapse, natural events, anarchy; just pick your poison, should have prepared us for such an event, well as much as one can be prepared, both mentally and material wise. If were both at home, we’ll not venture out, but fire-up our communications back-up to determine the extent of the attack and how long it’ll be before we can expect some semblance of normalcy. We’ll not run around like a chicken with it’s head cut off, but evaluate the damage and potential results, based on the available data and go from there. Regardless, I don’t see any scenario, where we’d leave, since we’ve been preparing our 40 acres for over 30 years. We’re kind of an outlier, when it comes to prepping. We’ve seen the slow collapse of America’s economy and morals for 3 decades and have always, when possible, to purchase items that would have a dual purpose.

What makes Daisy’s articles so interesting to me is that she actually has done what she’s talking about. She has skills and experiences which are the most valuable thing you can carry. Talking about something is always so much different from the actual deed. Like swimming!

If you’re serious about prepping or survival, you need to acquire the skills by doing them, preferably more than once and learn more from the mistakes. Get outside and camp; even if it’s in your backyard for now. Thanks Daisy!
Dave

For what it’s worth, I always keep several weeks spending money in cash in case the banks shut down or can’t access their computers.
Of course that’s in addition to the normal preps as mentioned.
Being on well and septic has it’s advantages, especially if you can access the water without power. It may be a hassle, but it’s do-able.

Didn’t Microsoft release an update to prevent these attacks? Seriously, how hard is it to click update now. One can only hope that this isn’t going to become a massive attack on the US, while still preparing for it to be a massive attack on the US.
This is going in circles when you say hope for the best but prepare for the worst ????

Wow! This is a great article! One of the best I’ve seen in a while. It brings up a lot of issues that people should be aware of. I’d like to share what happened to my wife and I during the power outage of 2003.

I retired at age 62 and began collecting Social Security. But then received a job offer I couldn’t refuse in Canada.

So I began working in Canada on August 1, 2003. The company put us up for 3 months in a furnished luxury townhouse (bedding on the beds, dishes in the cupboards, pool, maid service, all that). As a consequence, we brought no preps with us.

Two weeks later (August 14) the lights went out in the entire northeast for several days. We had no food to speak of in the cupboard, no Canadian money, and not so much as one candle for lighting. When the sun went down it got dark.

Later on my wife confessed, “You don’t know how close I was to begging you — I’m scared. I don’t care about the job. I don’t care about the money. Let’s go home.” (I never told her there wasn’t enough gas in the car to get back to the border. And, of course, the pumps weren’t working.)

That blackout was my impetus for writing the eight-book Non-Electric Lighting Series. It’s been well received. Today, whenever I feel sorry for myself, I go to Amazon and browse the reader feedback. Gee, maybe I’m not such a bad guy after all.

Here’s a link to one of the books. This one is on vegetable oil lamps. Really nice stuff to know if you get caught away from home (and away from your preps) when the lights go out.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00KB7F9SU/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_hsch_vapi_tkin_p1_i6

Here’s How a Massive Cyberattack Could Happen To Us

By Daisy Luther

Daisy Luther

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