Ripples

The aftereffects of the Sony hack are becoming more significant than they originally appeared. The initial impact was an embarrassing release of movie files, some employees getting spooky alerts on their computers, and the recognition that this was a major breach.

Then came the release of employee info, and the need to give people identity theft protection because of the scope of data that was pilfered and made available.

North Korea decided to deny that it had anything to do with it, while calling it a "righteous deed." The followup from the attackers demanding that The Interview be shelved made that denial seem disingenuous, though.

Now, emails are being released  make people realize how really un-private their email communications are. It might have been okay to know that your company could legally read whatever was sent over their system. Now, people are going to understand that ANYONE could potentially read anything sent over email. One executive may exit her job over private email comments about Obama. Other emails suggest an ongoing pay gap between men and women, even in the rarefied area of  actor's back-end points for A-list actors.

The initial idea of Data Wars was ill-formed, and might not actually happen. It might never be anything more than another form of asymmetrical warfare. It seems likely that the group that attacked Sony, even if state-funded, is not that large in numbers or in budget. So far the attacks haven't been life-threatening, even if some people's lives aren't as fun as they used to be. There's no reason, so far, to think that simple data access could really be physically dangerous to large numbers of people.

The ripple effects of this hack, though, are making it clear that our interconnected world is acquiring new vulnerabilities all the time, that there are ways to attack that don't depend on bloodshed and that  there are always those looking for creative ways to use new weapons.