The digital universe is growing; it's also becoming more unequal

The vulnerability of information and technology infrastructures is becoming more visible and alarming by the day. Earlier this year, two separate malware outbreaks – WannaCry and Petya – affected hundreds of thousands of people and organisations around the world. WannaCry crippled over 230,000 computers across 150 countries, with the UK’s National Health Service, Spain’s phone giant Telefónica and Germany’s state railways among those hardest hit. Thousands of machines running on Windows, including ATMs, ticketing machines, hospitals and numerous industrial control systems across the globe were also compromised.

First reported in Ukraine, Petya affected government services, banks and power utilities, along with Kiev’s airport and metro system. The radiation monitoring system at Chernobyl was even taken offline for fear of an attack. Petya also affected operations at India’s largest container port JNPT, in Mumbai; data put out by Symantec suggests that India was the worst affected country in Asia.

Researchers initially blamed the shutdown on ransom-ware – which seeks to make money by holding data hostage unless the victim pays a hefty ransom fee. But soon after, a bleaker conclusion emerged – that the malware was a ‘wiper’ with the objective of permanently destroying data. The aim, in other words, was to create chaos. Earlier this year, data of 17 million Zomato users was stolen in India and supposedly re-sold on the dark web. An IBM-Ponemon Institute 2017 study notes that the average cost of data breach in India has grown from Rs 9.73 crore in 2016 to Rs 11 crore in 2017. And, as a report by the Centre for Internet and Society, New Delhi, notes , the Aadhaar numbers of over 13 crore people and bank account details of about ten crore have been leaked through government portals in India because of poor security practices.