Worried about the NSA? About Big Brother? Our electronic net of convenience makes it easier for devious individuals to spy on us without our knowledge. Take the case of Regin, a recently discovered malware program that does just that. And it’s been around since at least 2008!
In a world where Big Data has been its own economic force in the sense that it drives what we build and supply, imagine if you had your own Big Data collector and no one knew about it. You don’t just have to steal state secrets to know what other countries are doing, but know what consumers are buying. The name of business is to understand where everyone is going and to get there first. With such knowledge you could amass a pretty substantial boost in commerce.
The targets include international players and the most interesting thing about this is that they believe this is state sponsored. It’s ultra-sophisticated and had to have been developed with a nation’s efforts, not just a few individuals.
Who’s behind this? I don’t know but it sure makes for some great fiction fodder. I could think of quite a few ideas you could leverage from this discovery.
“Robert Thompson was accustomed to chasing down bad guys. But the next one on his list was invisible. It would takes clues and good old fashion detective work to hunt down the creator of the Regin spyware program. Usually this was left to the geek crew, but they came up with nothing. So it was his turn and he had no idea this international secret would be so closely guarded by a nation that was willing to kill anyone who tried to find them…”
The true story is below. Check it out:
Regin – state sponsored malware
Joseph "Peppi" Vecchio 