Letter to the Editor: Crimes of the future are here now, and prevention is key

By now, most of you have heard about the shutdown of a major U.S. gas pipeline, owned by Colonial Pipeline Co., turned completely off by what authorities suspect is a Russian criminal gang, demanding ransom to eliminate the problem. And a huge problem it is.

I write to sound the alarm that these sorts of crimes — extortion by computer — certainly will continue, and we must be ready for such threats and be able to prevent them. I am no computer wizard; I get by with a little help from my friends. But I am an experienced criminal attorney, with more than 700 trials behind me (lost two), and I see this particularly pernicious crime as sure to increase. We do not want the culprits ever to go to trial; we want to prevent such attacks before they occur. Besides, finding out who did it and getting them in a courtroom may be impossible.

Every industry and every company must create, or license from those who do, software to thwart such attacks. I don’t know how; if I did, I would create it and become fabulously wealthy selling it. However, with the average salary for Apple’s new information technology hires ranging from $133.000 to $187,000 (they must be pretty darn good), we surely have the talent to do it. As added insurance against catastrophe, every industry and every company must create, or license from those who do, software to restart whatever operations were stopped by hackers. It will be costly, but it is the price of doing business in the internet age.

I add my thought that no victim of such an attack ever should pay the ransom, for these reasons: (a) to do so is to embolden the attacker to continue with their crimes; (b) you are dealing with criminals, totally unreliable — a recent article in Forbes indicated that only 8%.of companies that paid ransom for the return of files stolen by hackers actually got their files back after paying it; (c) if you pay, you are investing in the criminal enterprise; and, last but not least, (d) the criminals may demand more money!

Times are changing, and crimes are changing. Is the internet as much a blight as it is a benefit? Probably not, but it is here to stay, rife with all sorts of tricks and misinformation (just witness the interference in our elections) and now blatantly criminal hackers.

Yes, “crimes of the future” are here now, and we must do what we can — prevent them — because we probably cannot prosecute. And so, 2021 takes us back to 1732, when “a stitch in time saves nine” was first written in “Gnomologia: A Collection of the Proverbs, Maxims and Adages That Inspired Benjamin Franklin and Poor Richard’s Almanack.”

Ken Abraham

Former deputy attorney general

Dover