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2017 was a year like no other for cybersecurity. It was the year we found out the horrid truths at Uber and Equifax, and border security took our passwords. A year of WannaCry and Kaspersky, VPNs and blockchains going mainstream, health care hacking, Russian hackers, WikiLeaks playing for Putin’s team, and hacking back.
In 2017 we learned that cybersecurity is a Lovecraftian game in which you trade sanity for information.
Let’s review the year that was (and hopefully will never be again).
This was the year Kaspersky finally got all the big press it’s been angling for. Unfortunately for the antivirus company, it wasn’t for its research. Kaspersky spent an uncomfortable year in the headlines being accused of working with Russia’s FSB (former KGB). Eventually those suspicions got it banned from use by US government agencies.
Kaspersky’s alleged coziness with Putin’s inner circle has made the rounds in the press and infosec gossip for years. But it came to a head when an NSA probe surfaced, the Senate pushed for a ban, and — oddly — the Trump administration came with the executioner’s ax.
Obviously, Kaspersky — the company and its CEO of the same name — denied the accusations, and offered to work with the US government. They offered up their code for review and filed suit when the ban passed.
At this point, the only thing that might save Kaspersky’s reputation in the US would be finding us that pee tape. Fingers crossed.
Like Uber, but for Equifax
Equifax was forced to admit it was hacked badly in both March and July, with the latter affecting around 200 million Americans (plus 400,000 in the UK). Motherboard reported that “six months after the researcher first notified the company about the vulnerability, Equifax patched it — but only after the massive breach that made headlines had already taken place… This revelation opens the possibility that more than one group of hackers broke into the company.”
Shares of Equifax plummeted 35 percent after the July disclosure. And news that some of its execs sold off stock before the breach was made public triggered a criminal probe.
Read more: 2017’s biggest cybersecurity facepalms
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