The cold war era MI6 British spy and successful spy novelist John le Carre’ (real name David John Moore Cornwell) passed away recently at the age of 89. He is credited with bringing the cold war to life for readers around the world, and leaves behind a large body of popular spy novels many of which were turned into BBC miniseries and big-screen adaptations. The novels were based on the 20^th century cold war.

We have now moved on to the 21^st century cold war where the espionage “mole” has taken on a totally new meaning. We’ve seen a lot of reports and investigations concerning foreign government cyber interference in our 2016 elections process and now again in 2020 forcing companies like Facebook and LinkedIn to implement extensive changes to their social networks to reduce tampering, and it’s unclear how effective that’s been.  In 2018 NASA was hacked by what was described as an advanced persistent threat, with hackers accessing Mars Science Laboratory mission information. Now as we work through the COVID-19 pandemic, there have been hacks by Russia’s Cozy Bear and North Korea’s Hidden Cobra to steal coronavirus vaccine information from the US, European Union, Britain and Canada. We also now learn that Cozy Bear is the likely culprit of the latest, large scale breach impacting the US Treasury, Commerce Department, other US agencies and up to 18,000 businesses, “part of a global espionage campaign that stretches back months”. These nation backed cyber hackers are composed of well-funded expert teams. If you think it’s just a matter of keeping systems up to date and using the latest cybersecurity tools, then think again, the top tier cybersecurity firm FireEye was also breached to gain access to the tools in its digital vault. This is the biggest cybersecurity tools theft since, get this, the National Security Agency breach in 2016. According to FireEye the breach was done by a nation with top-tier offensive capabilities and novel techniques, we are still uncovering the What and How of this attack.  And this is nothing, just wait until Quantum computing becomes more viable putting all current encryption algorithms at risk.

The old cold war era spy tricks like the shoe heel transmitter, lipstick gun, suicide glasses and pocket camera are no match for 21^st century spy work. The 21^st century spies don’t need to come out of the cold, they work in well heated rooms with comfortable desks and the latest computing equipment.