This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends: The Cyberweapons Arms Race

Perlroth attended a hacking conference in Buenos Aires, Argentina, to observe the new generation of young hackers rising to prominence there. (These young people have relied upon hacking skills to access many tools, games, and online services that are forbidden under government embargoes. Hacking also gives them a means of escaping poverty.) Perlroth visited two “godfather[s]” of the Argentine hacking scene, Alfredo Ortega and Ivan Arce. Both men worked at the cybersecurity company Core Security, which is inextricably linked to the development of the hacking scene in Argentina. Ortega and Arce also mentored the younger generation of hackers. Ortega is unwilling to involve himself with government agencies because he does not trust the authorities, and Arce laments that the youth value money over loyalty. Perlroth realized that during her time in Argentina, her laptop has been tampered with, so she immediately threw it away. It was clear to her in that moment that the USA has lost its monopoly on the zero-day market.

In 2012, government-backed Iranian hacking teams infiltrated the world’s biggest oil company, Saudi Aramco, destroying computers, scrubbing data, and leaving behind the image of a burning American flag. They then targeted major American banks by flooding their websites with junk traffic until the sites crashed in “denial of service” attacks.