A matter of when, not if, hackers will make breakthrough

THE invitation by the Defence Ministry (Mindef) on Monday to attend a media briefing the very next morning came with few details of what to expect. The e-mail only mentioned that the session was about the ministry's IT system, and not much else. It was also stated that deputy secretary (technology) David Koh would speak to journalists at the end of the briefing.

As it turned out, the actual announcement was, in fact, IT-related, but on a much bigger scale than most of us had imagined. The ministry revealed that its I-net Internet system was the victim of a cyberattack in early February, with the perpetrators making off with the personal data of about 850 national servicemen and Mindef employees. The I-net system enables users to access the Internet via dedicated computer terminals in the ministry and at Singapore Armed Forces camps.

The information lost included NRIC numbers, telephone numbers and birth dates - things that one would normally put on lucky draw forms. Thus, it was a bit of a relief to hear that no passwords were lost.

Crucially, the unprecedented breach did not result in any classified military information being compromised as it is stored in a separate system. Mindef's sense is that the "targeted and well planned" attacks were part of an attempt to gain access to official secrets.

When the news broke after the 2pm embargo was lifted, the reactions on social media and from within the cybersecurity community came fast and furious. Netizens wondered how an organisation such as Mindef, which would presumably have a much tighter system in place than most, could have succumbed to such an attack?

As Mindef's Mr Koh, who is also the chief executive of the government's Cyber Security Agency, rightly pointed out, it is no secret that all government agencies are "prime targets" and under constant cyberattack, because of the vast amounts of confidential information that they possess. There has been much talk over the past couple of days as to who could have masterminded the cyberattack on Mindef's I-net, after Mr Koh said that Mindef's investigations found that it was not the work of casual hackers or criminal gangs.

Bill Taylor-Mountford, who works at American security intelligence firm LogRhythm, surmised that this attack proved that even the most fortified cyberdefences could be breached by persistent and possibly state-funded attackers.

Jeffrey Kok of CyberArk, meanwhile, noted that targeted attacks such as the one that Mindef experienced typically take a lot of planning and reconnaissance over a substantial period of time, and require certain skills and resources to pull off.

With technology evolving at such an unrelenting pace these days, it's quite safe to say that all organisations - big or small, government or private - must embrace artificial intelligence (AI) in a big way to help them detect and respond to a cyberthreat. After all, there is only so much a human being can do when it comes to cyberwarfare. With modern AI technology, the system can immediately detect abnormalities in the network and take action before any data is stolen or changed.

Attackers often lurk undetected inside a network for months, sometimes even years, before choosing to wreak havoc. These are people who are constantly trying to devise new and innovative ways to overcome the existing systems, and the key is to always try and remain at least one step ahead of them.

Doing so is far from easy, of course. This would mean having to invest heavily in the most advanced cybersecurity systems out there, ensuring employees are equipped with the most updated knowledge and skills, and to always operate on the assumption that a hacker is already inside the network. But the harsh reality is that even spending millions of dollars on a supposedly fool-proof system may still not be enough. In this day and age, one must accept the cruel fact that it is only a matter of when, and not if, an organisation's cyberdefences are eventually breached.

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