Welcome to the Matrix

Most of our modern world is controlled by computers and with viruses on the rise are we heading for a Matrix style ending? Rosie Khdir uncovers the threats to our digital society.

Computer viruses are on the rise and cyber criminals are finding ever more inventive ways of hacking into our personal data. Stealing credit card details is one thing, but hacking into our NHS systems is one click too far.

It was reported this year by More4 news that NHS computer systems were infected with more than 8,000 dangerous viruses from 2007-2008.

One of the trusts affected was the Sheffield Teaching Hospitals foundation trust, where eight hundred personal computers were infected with the Conficker B virus, which cancelled some of its non-urgent appointments.

Patient appointments were also cancelled due to the Mytob worm virus which attacked at Barts and the London NHS trust; it was reported that this incident happened because anti-virus software wasn’t installed properly.

These infiltrations have sparked fears that patient records could be leaked, but the Department of Heath said that the patient records systems are “protected by the highest levels of access controls and other security measures”.

This isn’t the first instance where viruses have managed to work their way into organisations that have a part in governing our lives. London’s Ealing Council was attacked by a virus which entered their systems on a memory stick, an infection which ended up costing over £500,000 in emergency recovery.

Reports said that 1,838 parking tickets had to be cancelled, rent could not be collected, repairs had to be re-ordered, £14,000 went on overtime to deal with the backlog of housing benefits and libraries lost £25,000 as they could not take money for fines and bookings.

We all see this scenario in films, that is, us losing control of our computers and them effectively destroying humanity. But we are beginning to discover that these sci-fi creators may not be so far off the mark? With the modernisation of our society and our reliance on computers, we are opening up our world to virtual attack.

The investigation carried out by the More4 news suggested that these viruses could have been avoided had the NHS updated its anti-virus software. Anti-virus companies are trying their best to develop the protection but that is only half the work, the rest needs to be done by those who will actually install it.

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Image credit: Marjan Krebelj