Are you bored of the news – or is the truth just too terrifying to face?
My colleague Konstancija, who covers gadgets, has a field day every time she dives into Reddit to sift through heated debates over seemingly trivial details. People are always “cooked” and “losing their s**t” over things like Garmin's announcement of a paid subscription tier.
“There hasn’t been a war for a long time,” we Lithuanians used to say before Russia struck Ukraine with full force, implying that people were simply "swimming in champagne and eating caviar for breakfast."
We say something similar about many Nordic movies. When all your basic needs – like food and safety – are met, you can afford to delve into philosophy or, more likely, obsess over trivial matters that either have little impact on your life or concern a distant future.
But it can also mean the opposite. Doing something seemingly inappropriate, like laughing at a funeral, becomes a way to cope – a form of escapism. I often feel an overwhelming urge to yap about inconsequential things: lactate thresholds, Strava show-offs, random finds during my runs (saw two beavers, found a charger, and five euros just this week), and other minutiae that don’t really matter.
However, as The Washington Post aptly puts it: "Democracy dies in darkness." To add to that, fear thrives in the unknown. So I suggest we pull our heads out of the sand and take a closer look at what’s happening around us. Here’s what’s been going on in the cybersecurity world recently.
To start, I have to say that many criminal hackers are absolute scumbags. They target hospitals, mental health institutions, schools, children, disabled individuals, and countless other vulnerable groups and organizations.
However, the naming conventions that security companies – or the hackers themselves – come up with tend to romanticize their actions. Iranian hackers are often referred to as “kittens,” Russian hackers as various types of “bears,” and so on.
Just for funs, we decided to join in on the fun and created our own naming convention for the most prolific ransomware gangs. Which one is your favorite?
North Korean hackers may have recently dominated headlines with the Bybit hack and their IT worker exports, but Russian cybercriminals continue to shape the future of the underground. Trend Micro, a security company, has published a detailed 66-page report on the Russian-speaking cybercriminal ecosystem.
Apparently, due to the current geopolitical climate, organized crime groups are increasingly acting as freelancers for nation-states (Russia) – often without even realizing it. These groups are now hacking for both political motives and financial gain in the same operations.
You can read our summary of the report here or visit Trend Micro’s blog for the full breakdown.
Thanks to popular culture – and, unfortunately, our personal experiences – hacking has become a common dinner table topic. However, there’s one fascinating subject that hasn’t quite made its way into our everyday conversations yet: quantum computing.
Quantum computing is one of the biggest technological breakthroughs of our time, and it’s important to learn as much about it as we can. Even if we don’t fully understand it yet, we need to talk about it and bring it into the spotlight. This way, we can avoid the kind of fear and confusion that still surrounds AI, with people worrying it’s coming for their jobs.
So, what am I talking about? Recently, three tech giants – Amazon, Microsoft, and Google – revealed their new quantum chips and hinted at concepts like the existence of the multiverse and Q-Day arriving sooner rather than later.
Q-Day refers to the moment when quantum computers will finally be capable of cracking classical encryption. Some speculate it will usher in a golden age for cybercriminals who have allegedly been stockpiling encrypted data, waiting for the day they can decrypt it. However, as I’ve been exploring in my recent articles, this notion might be overly exaggerated.
How exhausting this Fourth Industrial Revolution is, huh? Especially when you can’t even trust your own eyes and ears anymore.
So-called experts are no longer reliable. While the word “expert” was devalued long ago, the media still heavily relies on them to help explain the world to us. And we certainly couldn’t live without them – who am I to judge whether the return of a dire wolf is a good or bad thing? (Though I do have a strong opinion about this, as I’m sure you do too.)
But it’s time for publishers like us – churning out news at breakneck speed – to develop a better system for vetting our sources and experts. Even media giants like BBC, Newsweek, and Fortune have been fooled by clever marketing ploys, where supposed experts offering their opinions turn out to be completely fake or nonexistent.
I’m real (no expert in anything, though). Could show you my passport, but those are easily faked by AI.
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