Global Cyber Meltdown Hell

Greetings from Savannah… July 19, 2024 [WEBSITE]( | [UNSUBSCRIBE]( This outage is the worst of both worlds. Here are the brainiacs aiming to help fix it. Global Cyber Meltdown Hell CHRIS CAMPBELL Reporting from Savannah, Georgia… Hell is real. It may appear in many forms to many different people. But one of those forms is - without doubt - a halted TSA line where an infinite number of bosses look at a bag, scratch their chins, and call their bosses to look at that same bag. Forever. Yesterday, a woman had some suspicious stuff in her luggage. So suspicious, in fact, they stopped everything and scrambled the boss brigade. She was right in front of me. (So close.) One TSA agent called his boss, who then came, scratched his chin, then called his boss. His boss came, took a look, called his boss, and so on. We had five levels of bosses involved before anyone even moved the bag. Meanwhile, mind you… I’m standing next to the scanner machine - closest to the bag - with nowhere to go. When they finally had an underling pull it out of the machine and place it carefully on the table, they all gathered around it like a group of teenage boys staring at a rattlesnake. Yeah, you guessed it: They were waiting for directions from yet another boss. I think we were at seven boss’ bosses at this point. Finally, someone took a deep breath and unzipped the bag. He fished out a half-filled metal flask and a battery pack, holding them between two fingers like dead rats strapped to dynamite. Behind me, the line kept growing longer, all watching the scene play out. The bosses scratched their chins thoughtfully. They told an underling to put them through the machine again. Turns out - gasp - it was in fact a flask and a battery pack. Perhaps I’m being dramatic. Turns out, I got lucky after all. Unbeknownst to all of us, an even bigger security threat was brewing - this one from the deep pits of the interwebs. Enter the global cyber airport meltdown hell, a rung much further down in Dante’s epic. FOR {EMAIL}: A $511 Credit Has Been Applied To Your Account Congrats! [Please click here to learn how to claim this credit.]( “IT’S ALL TOAST. ALL OF IT!” “I got my first hand-written boarding pass today,” says Akshay Kothari. Kothari, if you don’t know, is the co-founder of all-in-one workspace app Notion. He’s far from the only one who’s sat in airport purgatory today for hours on end. It’s only been a few hours and they’re already calling it one of the biggest IT outages… ever. First thing to know: be on guard for the next week or so. Hackers and criminals will try to use this to trick you. They’ll pretend to be IT professionals who want to help you. Second thing to know, this outage happened because the Internet is broken. After all… How is it that airlines, banks, media, payments, emergency systems and healthcare can all go down at once - all around the world? The answer: People don't usually care about upgrading their tech until it blows up in their faces and costs them a fortune. Whether this latest fiasco was an attack or just incompetence, it’s a stark reminder of how fragile our connected world is. But this deserves nuance. The Worst of All Worlds As much as I rage against centralized systems in these digital leaves… CrowdStrike, the apparent cause for the outages, is in fact a distributed (decentralized) system. It employs a cloud-based platform, CrowdStrike Falcon, which leverages a combination of endpoint protection, threat intelligence, and threat hunting capabilities. The system processes massive amounts of data weekly and relies on a distributed network of agents and cloud instances to monitor and respond to security threats in real-time. BUT, here’s the problem: That distributed network of agents is 100% reliant on a centralized client. This is actually the worst of both worlds when disruptions inevitably happen. A complex distributed system that hinges on one client is even riskier than a 100% centralized one. It's just as easy to crash but a nightmare to revive. This goes to show: You can’t have one foot in the door and one foot out. Cryptographers to the Rescue As the Internet gets more complex, distributed systems are going to become more necessary - and they can’t rely on siloes to keep them going. The grandfathers of the Internet - with the development of the ARPANET - understood this. They were tasked with creating a communication system that could withstand nukes and keep going. In this week’s Early Stage Crypto Investor, we published a report on one crypto project helping to turn the Internet right side up. And, to boot, they have the attention of several top government agencies - including the USAF and DoD. I’m calling it the “Stovepipe Slayer” - and it’s among many under-the-radar crypto projects in our portfolio. If you’re a member, [click here to get access]( and learn more about the brainiacs behind it. Not yet a member? Not a problem: [Click here to see if ESC is right for you](. Until next time, Chris Campbell For Altucher Confidential Rate this email Like Dislike Thanks for rating this content! Looks like something went wrong. Please try to rate again. Buy this Sub-$5 Play on Elon Musk’s Final Masterpiece After revolutionizing space exploration and the auto industry… Elon Musk is now planning to revolutionize MONEY with this new venture. [Click here to see the details because once Elon flips the switch…]( Which could happen in the next 24 hours… It could send [this sub-$5 play skyrocketing in the coming months](. You Might be Interested in... [America’s New Money is not green. And it does not rip!]( [Jim Rickards Presents: Survival Secrets for the Incoming Crisis with Jason Hanson]( [Are these Investments Set to Soar?]( ☰ ⊗ [ARCHIVE]( [ABOUT]( [Contact Us]( © 2024 Paradigm Press, LLC. 1001 Cathedral Street, Baltimore, MD 21201. By submitting your email address, you consent to Paradigm Press, LLC. delivering daily email issues and advertisements. To end your Altucher Confidential e-mail subscription and associated external offers sent from Altucher Confidential, feel free to [click here.]( Please note: the mailbox associated with this email address is not monitored, so do not reply to this message. We welcome comments or suggestions at feedback@altucherconfidential.com. This address is for feedback only. For questions about your account or to speak with customer service, [contact us here]( or call (844)-731-0984. Although our employees may answer your general customer service questions, they are not licensed under securities laws to address your particular investment situation. No communication by our employees to you should be deemed as personalized financial advice. We allow the editors of our publications to recommend securities that they own themselves. However, our policy prohibits editors from exiting a personal trade while the recommendation to subscribers is open. In no circumstance may an editor sell a security before subscribers have a fair opportunity to exit. The length of time an editor must wait after subscribers have been advised to exit a play depends on the type of publication. All other employees and agents must wait 24 hours after on-line publication or 72 hours after the mailing of a printed-only publication prior to following an initial recommendation. Any investments recommended in this letter should be made only after consulting with your investment advisor and only after reviewing the prospectus or financial statements of the company. Altucher Confidential is committed to protecting and respecting your privacy. We do not rent or share your email address. Please read our [Privacy Statement.]( If you are having trouble receiving your Altucher Confidential subscription, you can ensure its arrival in your mailbox by [whitelisting Altucher Confidential.](