The ongoing and recent cyber attacks of governments, internet giants and corporate computer systems—and then holding their systems and data hostages—reminds me of pirates from the past. 

Piracy, as a profession has been around for a long time. Today, pirates do not have to physically board a ship to gain riches. Today’s hackers can find a secret password, like “X marks the spot” on company’s website. Hackers marked an X on Colonial Pipeline website. Colonial is a company that transports around 2.5 million barrels of oil a day from the Gulf of Mexico to the states across the  Southeast. Hackers were then able to hold the company’s system hostage and, as Liz Lemon of 30 Rock says: shut ‘er down.”  Just the temporary shut off of oil was able to create shortages and long lines at gas stations throughout the South. 

According to Bloomberg, DarkSide was able to get into Colonial Pipeline’s system through a virtual private network (VPN) designed so employees could remotely access the company’s computer.  The best way that I can describe DarkSide is to compare it to the Death Star in Star Wars.  The Death Star’s superlaser can destroy a planet the DarkSide has the capability to destroy a company–and maybe a country.

According to KrebsonSecurity, DarkSide “is a ransomware-as-a-service platform that vetted cybercriminals can use to infect companies with ransomware to carry out negotiations and payments with victims.”  Somehow DarkSide was able to get Colonial’s leaked password off the “dark web” and plant the Jolly Rogers in their board room to the tune of $4.4 million. 

And here is where they get more like their colleagues of the past. A main source of income for pirates was the ransoming of captured people (slave trading) confiscating and reselling appropriated goods for individual wealth, in particular gold and other precious objects.  It was not necessarily easy money, but it did have certain benefits commensurate with the risks. If pirates did not go down fighting like Blackbeard, who after taking numerous gunshots and saber slashes, was decapitated by a Scotsman wielding a broadsword. Chances are, if they were  captured, they were unlikely to receive any quarter from their captors; and usually faced the short end of a rope. As of yet, I am not sure if any modern-day hackers have had their heads looped off or swung from a yardarm.

The thing is we have an idea of who some of these modern day pirates are.  However, most of what we know about pirates of the past comes to us from fiction or movies like Treasure Island, The Pirates of the Caribbean (Johnny Depp, like Errol Flynn of the 1930s and 40s, made a nice living portraying pirates.); or Tom Hanks in Captain Phillips. 

Piracy, like hacking and “legitimate businesses,” has a simple maxim: follow the money—or follow whatever it may be at the time that will get you rich. The question is the method used to gather those riches.  For pirates it could be following slave traders;  Spanish treasure ships from the Americas; or container ships rounding the Horn of Africa. As global trade increased so did sea going global trade routes. And so did pirates.

The Mediterranean Sea has always been infested with pirates. The ancient Egyptians under Ramses III fought the “Sea People” in the latter era of the Bronze Age, which goes back to around 1000-1100 BCE. (Historians are still not sure who these Sea People actually were.) 

The Romans were constantly battling Cilician pirates, (from the southern coast of what is now Turkey), particularly those taking advantage of the slave trade. When Julius Caesar was 25 years-old he was captured by slave traders in 75 BCE.  He was eventually ransomed back.  While he was in captivity he told the pirates he would come back and crucify them. Not only did Caesar keep his word; he got his ransom money back. It is hard to imagine a CEO of a major company today doing the same. 

Piracy continued after the fall of the Roman Empire.  Mediterranean pirates were fighting a quasi-religious sea war in the classic Christians vs Muslims well after the Crusaders were pushed out of the Holy Land.

Well up into the 1800s these pirates were demanding tribute and still wreaking havoc on trade.  When they captured US merchantmen, Thomas Jefferson sent in the Navy and Marines “to the shores of Tripoli” to battle the Barbary Pirates and recover the captured merchantmen destined to be sold into slavery. The US needed to protect and secure its trade routes for the new country was no longer under the protection of the British navy. 

As Europe came out of the Dark Ages countries and empires grew they fought on land.  Europeans took to the sea and  began to expand and develop lucrative trade routes.  One of the first countries of this era in the maritime global trade was Spain. The Spanish not only found themselves fighting on land but also trying to protect their ocean going trade routes.  As their empire expanded to the Americas and beyond, they now had to fend off the English, Dutch and French pirates attacking them in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, the Caribbean Sea as well as their long time Muslim nemeses in the Mediterranean Sea. 

 Despite their illegalities and the killings, and in some cases they were pretty gruesome.  For instance, Algiers pirates were known to have fired alive French captives from cannons back at besieging French ships. What made all this possible is that pirates could not operate unless they were in league with somebody on land. Somebody who said: what’s in it for me. People who would look the other way when pirates shot somebody off in a cannon. 

A pirate’s ship at sea needs a port. In most ports they would have been tried and hanged for their seafaring ways. They would need safe harbors for protection; willing merchants to sell their appropriated plunder to; and willing able bodied seamen to man the rigging and board ships. Piracy, for the average seaman, paid a lot better than serving on a merchant vessel or a man-of-war in a navy. (The same case can be made today about some of the international hackers prying on the global economic cyberspace—they need a port.)

By the 1700 and 1800s the Spanish, French and English had well established colonies in the New World that provided valuable resource and wealth.  And as the old adage says: trade follows the flag and so does attacking trade—and the flag. Pirates like Francis Drake, Henry Morgan and John  Hawkins no doubt received a wink and nod from Queen Elizabeth I, while they operated with impunity against the Spanish in a Catholic vs Protestant face-off.  Not only were pirates making themselves rich; but later as privateers they were filling England’s coffers with plundered Spanish riches. Eventually all were knighted for their naval exploits. (I would bet that some of Putin’s geeks have been richly rewarded by Mother Russia for their efforts, too.)

Here is where piracy takes a bit of a turn.  First, there was just plain old greed motivating pirates.  Then came a religious twist.  Not only were pirates making themselves rich, they could intertwine it with religious leaders offering safe harbors for crippling infidels and heretics. 

It did not take long for the landed-ruling elites to realize why should pirates and religious potentates cash in on the riches.  The wars that European countries were waging against each other was done at a considerable cost. Piracy was a double a whammy way to get back at your enemy.  It denied them of colonial resources; and at the same time, filled their treasury to finance the war. It was a way of using your enemy’s wealth against them. 

Soon some of the most successful pirates became privateers.  Privateers were basically government licensed pirates who were given a “Letter of Marque and Reprisal.” A letter of marque was a contract issued to a ship or a captain and outlined who got what and how much from captured enemy shipping. What made privateering attractive to the ruling monarchs and governments of the time was that it privatized the cost of putting a navy out to sea. 

For instance, in 1794 it cost the United States almost $700,000 to build six ships, one the USS Constitution, and then three years to build. A privateer could batten down the hatches, unfurl the mainsail and hit the seas ready for action in the time it took to get supplies onboard and a crew. In fact, Article I Section 8, Clause 11 gives Congress the right “To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water.”

During the War of 1812 the US government issued more than 500 letters of marque as sort of militia of the sea to attack, not so much the British navy, but it’s commerce. In the two years of war US privateers captured 2,000 ships. 

Pirates are still out and about on the the sea today but it’s the ones on land that surf the internet hacking their way on board a corporate website not with blunderbusses, pistols and cutlasses that are causing the trouble. It is a bloodless profession fought in dark cold buildings with special software tools like: Rookits, software that allow cyber attackers to take control of a computer. This is an innocent program designed originally to remotely fix computer problems. That sounds like dropping the Union Jack and then running up the Jolly Rogers. 

Then there is Keyloggers. Software that records a computer’s keystrokes to get to credit card numbers passwords etc. 

And in this era of pandemic who can forget the specially placed malware virus and worms.  Once on board your computer it begins to steal your data and infect other computers. No mask needed here. What is needed is a safe port to launch their attacks from. 

What started out in the 1980s with MIT students goofing around on the newly launched internet, has turned into global trade (and piracy) with organized groups, like REvil and SolarWinds, operating out of countries like Russia, Iran and China—and who knows even the USA.  North Korea has a cyber army of about 7,000 soldiers to carry out cyber terrorism. 

And like those privateers of the past, who fought wars for king and country, they proved to be a handy force when it came to attacking their benefactors enemies. For all we know we could be in the early stages of the next war with these newfangled pirates/privateers. Instead of bombers or a missile strike taking out key infrastructures like a pipeline; several well paid geeks can corrupt and shutdown corporate or government computer systems; launch trojan horses, worms or whatever to bring a country’s commerce, and infrastructure to its knees. And they can do it and never have to climb over a gunwale carry a cutlass and pistols. 

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/empire_seapower/white_slaves_01.shtml

https://www.upguard.com/blog/biggest-data-breaches

https://thecinemaholic.com/movies-about-pirates/

https://www.worldhistory.org/Piracy/

https://www.worldhistory.org/Sea_Peoples/

https://www.bitidentify.com/blog/hacker-types-tools-and-techniques/

 

https://www.wired.com/2001/03/inside-russias-hacking-culture/

https://www.usni.org/magazines/naval-history-magazine/2014/march/yes-privateers-mattered

https://www.battlefields.org/learn/articles/militia-sea