In the 21^st century, digital security has been one of the weakest points in countries and companies worldwide. Digital security has been emphasized during this Presidential race, with Hillary Clinton’s emails being leaked. But just how far can the U.S. implement digital security? The answer is bleak, with billions of devices connected to the Internet constantly, and with little to no security being applied to the majority of these DVRs and routers. This mass of technology with no security has been the worry of many computer experts.

 
These worries were fulfilled on October 21^st, when a massive attack brought down a large company that monitors and routes Internet traffic called Dyn. With the fall of Dyn came the fall of Netflix, Twitter, and Etsy as well, for a few hours.

 
This attack was coordinated by using thousands of hijacked devices that spewed millions of nonsensical, invalid messages on the servers overloading them. This attack is known as DDoSing. These attacks will only become more often and voracious with a new software that’s becoming global.

(Here are the regions of the U.S. most heavily impacted.)

A botnet-creating software called Mirai was used to create this massive attack. Mirai first infects the home computer through emails, and from there spreads throughout all devices connected to the router, and these viruses remain in the hijacked devices. Even if the virus is deleted from your computer, there may still be dormant viruses across the house, waiting for a command.

Now, major websites have crashed, and there seems to be very little stopping this new charge of infection and DDoSing. Major companies have already recalled some devices that have minimum security, but there still remains many more devices defenseless. The rush to keep up with technology and stay ahead of viruses and attacks will be the largest struggle this coming century. This may just be the start of more problems demanding new solutions.