After The British Library Hack
Late last October, the British Library’s computer system was hacked, like the entire system. This was made public only on October 31, the cause was a professional gang of hackers who have been holding it to ransom. There are also claims that the personal data of many of its users – presumably bank card details – have been offered for sale on the Dark Web.
I have visited the Library once since then. The phones were down, even the scanners were not working. This has been a mild inconvenience for me because I can always find other things to research in the meantime, but for many people it has been far more serious. Restoring and protecting the system is estimated at £7 million, and it will of course cost a lot more. Things like this always do.
The Library’s blogs appear to be hosted elsewhere, or were relocated elsewhere. At any rate, readers have been kept informed of any developments as far as restoration is concerned. The on-line catalogue has now been restored, after a fashion; books, journals, some newspapers and a few other things can be searched but they cannot be ordered on-line because the reader cannot log in.
“Registered Readers should collect a paper order form Reading Room staff, fill in the required details, and in the shelfmark box enter one of the following references:
P.P.1945.say.
Return the completed ticket to staff”.
The people behind the hack are members of a gang called Rhysida, named, apparently, after a species of centipede. They appear to have been around since at least 2021. How should they be dealt with?
Once they are brought to book, I would suggest capital punishment. If that sounds drastic, consider the consequences if some vital piece of infrastructure is hacked in this fashion. There are now well over 8 billion people on this planet. We need our state of the art computer systems to provide for them all. What would happen if a major hospital system were so hacked, or air traffic control? In the former case, people would die for wont of operations, diagnoses, medicine... In the latter, use your imagination. These people are not simply criminals, they are terrorists. Usually, terrorists are motivated by ideology. That is bad enough, but terrorists prepared to damage infrastructure and endanger lives purely for financial gain are contemptible beyond belief.
Anyone who has the skill to pull off a hack of this nature can make a good living legitimately in the cyber sector. We should not suffer these monsters to live.