Last week, Microsoft learned that new computers released
from Chinese factories boasted one unintended feature: A preloaded virus. To add to Microsoft’s natural corporate panic,
this crafty computer bug is of the particularly nasty variety. Capable of such clandestine acts as switching
on a customer’s webcam and recording their keystrokes, the virus permits
cyber-villains to metaphorically ransack a consumer’s laptop of all coveted
personal information.
Microsoft’s squad of digital crime investigators found that,
of the twenty random computers they purchased from various Chinese
manufacturers, four “were running counterfeit versions of Windows software that
were infected with the virus.”
Microsoft’s subsequent speedy takedown of this network of
infected computers is consistent with its security campaign called Project MARS
(Microsoft Active Response for Security).
Members of the campaign independently pursue threats to Microsoft’s
products and customers the moment they are detected, allowing law enforcement
agencies to cross the yellow tape at their understandably delayed convenience.
Now, we are all familiar with the presence of hackers,
malware, viruses, etc. Indeed, we accept
their company with general nonchalance.
A fair statement? I think
so. After all, aside from my free AVG
download, I have taken no precautions to protect my thus-far-functional Lenovo.
Moreover, when a pernicious virus does seize our devices,
our reactions are generally mild.
Because we all expect an eventual PC security breach, when it does
happen, we are unsurprised and even relieved.
Yet again, technology failed to fail us…by failing us! If you can grip that circular statement, I’m
trying to assert that we expect these things to happen and are unaffectedly
passive when they do (unless in the middle of a class report or shopping
purchase).
While our calm reactions hardly boost Aspirin sales, I must
ask: Should our peace at such personal
invasions not compel us to pause? To
reassess? To warily retreat from the
machines that grope and grab at our cyber-selves?
Indulge me for a moment:
Human minds house our most personal thoughts, our
all-important financial information, our memories of family outings, and all of
the individual tidbits and surprises that construct our corporeal form and our
metaphysical beings. If a thief cracked
the code to our brains and fled with this information, we’d recognize his act
as the monumental transgression that it is.
But wait… All those
things that our minds contain… All those
precious things that make us…us… Didn’t
we just input them into our computers yesterday? And the day before? And the day before that? And last year? Isn’t that what I’m doing right now?
Why do we continue to insert ourselves into technologies
that are so easily plundered and despoiled?
As a population, we need to pause our tweeting, texting, posting,
Googling, blogging, ordering, and gaming for just one moment and decide…
Do we want to be inimitable?
Or do we want to implant so much of ourselves into technology that we become
hack-able, reproducible, unremarkable beings?
No comments:
Post a Comment