Recent hacking incidents, whether they be after the US Government, media corporations, or businesses, are constant reminders that our vastly connected world of computers may not be as safe as we think. Although seemingly remote, each and every hack has major implications for everyone. Some hacks have even disturbed our political system.

In the last week of September, Russian hackers besieged almost half of America’s voter registration systems, with four states compromised. Political concerns notwithstanding, this hack seems to be more of a robbery than a revolution. Since it targeted the registration databases and not the vote count, it could not affect the election’s outcome. However, a breach of the databases would allow Russian hackers to obtain any personal information included on voting forms, which they could then sell.

A similar hack on the Democratic National Committee revealed research on Donald Trump and “efforts by DNC officials to undermine . . . Bernie Sanders.” In this case, the most valuable property stolen was a collection of secrets and evidence of a civil war among the DNC members. A pattern exists; every time a political organization is hacked, participants are subject to an unwarranted and digital search and seizure. As a whole, espionage and conflict appear to be moving from behind shotguns to behind screens.

Media corporations are also under fire. In 2014, hackers stole information from over 500 million Yahoo users, a breach that Yahoo personnel only recently discovered. Because Yahoo manages email addresses, phone numbers, and encrypted passwords, this hack is a virtual catastrophe, especially given that banking websites and social networks often use email addresses and phone numbers as usernames. Eventually, the data thieves can decrypt the passwords and gain access to those 500 million accounts; unfortunately, Yahoo’s late discovery of this hack has given the infiltrators over two years to find a way to do so. Combined with the common knowledge that too many people use the same password for several accounts, large sums of money and privacy may be lost.

Finally, businesses and other organizations are not safe from hacking either. Wired reports that hackers were able to “take control of a moving Tesla [car’s] brakes.” Although Tesla was able to make a patch for their security weakness ten days after the hack was reported, the thought of a hacker being able to trigger a car accident is a scary one.

The public, like corporations and large organizations, is also worried about cybersecurity. According to a Gallup poll held in February of this year, an astounding 73% of participants stated that cyberterrorism was a critical threat to America. This figure trumps the percentages of people who identified the spread of infectious diseases (63%), refugees entering Europe and North America (52%), and global warming (50%) as critical threats.

Even students within our high school acknowledge the presence of hackers in their lives. Aditya Agarwal ‘18 states, “I feel relatively safe in websites I trust, such as Amazon, but I do realize that they have my credit card information, and if they get hacked, [the hackers] will have my information.” Agrawal’s biggest fear is identity theft, as he acknowledges that “you don’t know what’s happening to you until it’s too late.”

Nastassja Kuznetsova ‘19 had similar thoughts about potential hacks on Wells Fargo, the bank she uses, saying that “if someone took a copy of the Wells Fargo website. . .[she] would log into it,” giving her data to cyber con artists.

With such a wide range of targets, hacking is clearly a significant threat to society. But innovation will eventually triumph, right?

Unfortunately, cybersecurity issues will continue to exist because hacking is almost synonymous with programming; essentially, the very innovation we enjoy is the same force that defrauds us of our data. In order to insert malicious code into a system, hackers search for weaknesses. At times, this is somewhat like chemistry; some hackers insert code and observe their target system’s reactions in order to systematically determine where they can create the most damage.

Other times, a weakness does not lie in the system, but in the users of the system; a successful hack can be surprisingly low-tech if someone can watch the administrator log in. Otherwise, hackers inject trojans or keyloggers. Trojans, which derive their name from the Trojan Horse, secretly gain entry to a system and steal or destroy data. Keyloggers are similar, except their power lies in their ability to record anything a user types. The latter is arguably more dangerous, as keyloggers can swipe the user credentials of any service a target logs into. This includes everything from financial asset trading accounts to online shopping accounts to online banking.

Fortunately, a small amount of hope exists. The current and most effective solution is to use a more complex system of security, such as those with biometric authentication or security questions. This layering effect complicates the process of hacking; if you were to sign into your email account with both a password and a code sent to your phone, a hacker could not gain access to your account without invading both devices. Enabling the fingerprint scanner on your phone further fortifies your digital defenses. Still, no security is guaranteed, as hackers can find a way to destroy the system instead of stealing data. However, it may be enough to discourage a hacker from trying.

In total, our outlook on the future of privacy and security looks bleak. Whether you’re a gmail user, an online banker, or a businessperson, hacking can put your information into the hands of a good programmer with bad intentions. The very workings of hacking do not allow privacy and security to exist, and the best defense against these techno-thieves is to buy time. As great as computers are, society may need to reconsider its collective choice to depend on them.