To think financial 'Cybergeddon' is likely at some point

[cremmatoryum]

Imagine you wake up one day and all the world's major banks have been simultaneously hacked - everyone's financial records (personal and business) are wiped or held to ransom. Aibu to think this is almost inevitably likely to happen one day in the not too distant future?

I don't worry about it excessively, or do anything about it - perhaps some people print out bank statements etc in case they ever need to prove what was in their accounts, but I suspect that a paper statement would be pretty useless in the chaos that would ensue.

Just wondering if other people muse on this too? There have been movies/books set in post-cybergeddon futures, so people do think about it, but if (when?) it happens we'll all be pointing fingers at governments and banks for not being better prepared.

Oh wow. Imagine that!

I do think about this occasionally and agree it may well happen to some extent at some point. We keep emergency cash for this reason, but to be honest it wouldn't help beyond the first week. We'd quickly have much bigger and scarier problems than how to buy beans.

I keep a few hundred pounds hidden at home in £10 notes with this kind of thing in mind. Look at the petrol thing and how quickly that escalated. Now imagine if no one could buy anything. I think it could turn lawless very quickly.

I’m still waiting for the meteorite.

I agree, it would be scary, but to hack a single bank’s mainframe would be a pretty massive undertaking let along several simultaneously

I think more likely (but still not likely) would be someone hacks CHAPS/ Faster Payments so that money isn’t moving round the system - this would cause absolute chaos but transactions would just back up and ultimately be released.

It would be carnage so hopefully there’s enough to stop it

Watch American preppers, this comes up a lot.

"I think it could turn lawless very quickly."
With the thug Police we have and a ruthless government, people would just be shot in the streets. I think food parcels would be given out, as in Covid times. There's enough people who are decent.
It's scarier in the US were a lot of people have guns.

This happened to Ulster bank customers some years ago.

It lasted about 3/4 weeks -17th June to 10th July

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_RBS_Group_computer_system_problems

www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-30127164.amp

perhaps some people print out bank statements etc in case they ever need to prove what was in their accounts

Most big companies (not just banks) keep backups of their computer records, including often off-site backups. I don't know what banks currently do, but I wouldn't be surprised if they send backups at least once a day into nuclear-bomb proof vaults not physically accessible from the internet.

If you keep a copy of your data in Microsoft Onedrive cloud storage, they have specific anti-ransomeware measures that means they will notice and alert you if a lot of data is suddenly changed. And rergardless of why one or more documents were updated and who did it, as long as you notice a problem within 30 days, you can get the previous version back. (To be fair, it seem unlikely if not impossible that Microsoft keeps a copy of all data physically disconnected from the internet though.)

It would be one hell of a hack.
Most banks have securities and redundancies in place as they do get attacked on a regular basis.

As @Blankspace4 says, you would be better off going after the central clearing routes, or even attacking the physical infrastructure so parts of the web crash.

IF the banks go down, people will swap quite quickly to an alternative - money is just commonly agreed exchange value, at the end of the day. Blockchain, cryptocurrency and NFTs are all being played with online, whilst there are local currencies in circulation in the UK. It would be chaotic for a few months and there would be suffering - but given the dependence of modern life on moving goods and people quickly, we would sort it out.

Ahhh…just dreaming about my credit card debt being wiped out. DH would be pretty chuffed too. Blissful.

We keep emergency cash for this reason, but to be honest it wouldn't help beyond the first week

If the scenario OP described happened, I don’t think emergency cash would help at all because I don’t think the shops would be open in a way were you could go in and spend it.
If this was something you wanted to prep for, you’d be better off with a stash of long life food.

You should absolutely listen to this episode of Darknet Diaries. It's not favourite crime/cyber security podcast and it's always absolutely riveting - this one is about a robbery of millions of pounds from a bank.

darknetdiaries.com/episode/72/

DH used to work for a company that dealt with paying out dividends to shareholders and other financials things.
They had on the opposite side of the city a while other office, the sole purpose being that if anything happens to the main office (power cut, burst pipe, etc) then everyone could move over to the other office. Every night backs up tapes were physically taken over to the empty office so it always had up to date data.
I imagine all of the major banks and institutions will have similar somewhere. Some might even have back ups in other countries etc

If a major conflict between modern countries loomed there wouldnt be tanks on the streets ( unless they were ours to keep us under order) , all the utilities and internet would be overwhelmed .. Im sure the Russians but especially the Chinese (and good old us of course......except we all use Huawei) have devious plans to close a country down in hours without a shot being fired . Happy thoughts peeps .

@BrieAndChilli

DH used to work for a company that dealt with paying out dividends to shareholders and other financials things. They had on the opposite side of the city a while other office, the sole purpose being that if anything happens to the main office (power cut, burst pipe, etc) then everyone could move over to the other office. Every night backs up tapes were physically taken over to the empty office so it always had up to date data. I imagine all of the major banks and institutions will have similar somewhere. Some might even have back ups in other countries etc

Many big companies do these days. But there's probably at least one company a week hit with a ransomware attack. Probably even every day. Look at what happened to sepa, such a massive cyber attack that they had to renew their entire infrastructure and are still having issues to this day. That attack happened last year.

Banks tend to have pretty solid defences, round the clock people monitoring it too. That doesn't mean it's impossible to get in, but it would take a highly concentrated effort from a government state. There's other companies that places like China and Russia actively attack that aren't banks, and they still haven't managed to get in, yet. Can't say for definite it won't ever happen though.

The defences themselves aren't really the weakness in a company either that hackers attack. It's the employees that are the weakness.

Now something else to worry about!

Well let’s say I am not a fan of cash disappearing. We are putting our life at the mercy of technology more and more.

I’d be too busy trying to fix it to be able to panic.

Even if we had cash it wouldn’t hold carnage off for long.

People would react pretty madly and spend it straight away - fights etc

Marshal law would be enacted and people would be required to attend their places of work to ensure continuation of gas, electric, water, law and order etc e.g. if wages not being credited. The army would distribute food, guard supermarkets and petrol stations and other strategically vital infrastructure, and quite probably deal with looters and any street disorder the police couldn't keep up with (if marshal law was in place).

I'm confident that such a wide scale disaster would be sorted fairly quickly but it would be nasty in the short term and if it was an attack by a state actor, war would likely follow.

Let's hope nothing like that happens though, and it probably won't happen quite like that anyway. Whatever it is, we'd cope with that just like we've coped with all of this. It'll be fine.

I got stuck at work with a conspiracy theorist the other day...... 40 mins and none of my colleagues came to rescue me!

This came up.... a part of the great plan for new world order or something. She bought all of my gas heaters. The lot 6 x £95 so I was happy with that! The ones you. Need a calor canister for so she can have heat when the government switch off our gas supply!

If electricity went off everywhere (lebanon at the moment) it wouldnt matter how many back ups there were - nothing would be accessible anywhere 😬😬😬

Martial (law)

@mikedyson

Martial (law)

Please accept my most felicitous apologies, good sir.