Global IT outage is ‘closest we’ve come to a digital apocalypse’ as experts fear world on the brink of mass cyberattack

THE global IT outage has been likened to the long-fabled ‘digital apocalypse’, a scenario that would see the world disconnect completely from the internet.

When the incident occurred last Friday, 911 services were disrupted in some states, planes were grounded, media broadcasts taken offline, GPs unable to see patients, and people unable to make Visa card payments.

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The main worry is for simultaneous attacks to take place, instead of just a singular hit[/caption]

“It’s definitely the closest we’ve ever come to a digital apocalypse,” Jake Moore, global cybersecurity adviser at ESET, told The Sun.

“If you’d asked me this last week, I would have laughed at anyone who would have said that this was possible.

“But it comes back to the old adage of: expect the unexpected.”

Moore pointed to Black Mirror-esque films like Leave the World Behind, which he said give us a “look into what the future could potentially hold”.

He added: “But… it never really was assumed possible that we’d ever come close.”

Seeing what was possible from just one faulty CrowdStrike security update has made the threat of a widespread cyberattack – or internet-killing solar flare – all the more concerning.

“To see something like 8.5million devices knocked offline simultaneously, that’s what we’ve never experienced before,” Moore continued.

“Which made it feel like this is potentially now a real threat that cyber attackers could attempt to manipulate or attack.”

Dr Erisa Karafili, associate professor at the University of Southampton’s cybersecurity research group, said the incident gave the world “a small taster of what can happen”.

She added: “It teaches us that we need to be very conscious of the world where we are living.

“Interconnectivity comes with the threat of cyberattacks and systems issues.

“There should not be this illusion of security.”

However, the main worry is for simultaneous attacks to take place, instead of just a singular hit.

“That actually makes it unlikely,” Moore reassured. “Because you would need such high level – God-level – access into so many different organisations to then strike at once.”

A communications wipe out, as shown in Leave the World Behind, where emergency services, mobile phones and navigation are all taken offline is the biggest worry.

Fortunately, this nightmare scenario is incredibly hard to execute.

“For all of those to be simultaneously targeted and brought down successfully at the same time still remains unlikely,” Moore concluded.

“However, I like to be positive in everything that happens.”