The Untold Story Of NotPetya, The Most Devastating Cyberattack In History

There is a reason why nuclear weapons remain the favoured WMD of governments around the world, even when biological weapons could arguably kill more people for less investment: blowback. While it is initially targetable, an engineered supervirus would quickly spread across the world, hitting unintended targets and eventually even damaging the nation that initially released it.

This adage is even more true in the age of cyberwarfare. Due to the nature of the internet, geographical boundaries are meaningless, and a weapon targeting a single nation or government will travel around the world at the speed of light, infecting computers almost everywhere in the world.

Last year, this point was illustrated perfectly by the release of the ‘NotPetya’ computer virus by a Russian group, targeting Ukrainian computers. But it did not stay in Ukraine for long.

Over the course of a day, it infected thousands of computers across all of the populated continents on Earth. The US government estimates it caused at least $10 billion worth of economic damage.

Writing for Wired, Alan Greenspan tells the story of how “a single piece of code crashed the world”. Focusing on the destructive impact the virus had on shipping company Maersk, he shows just how vulnerable modern companies and governments are to destructive cyberattacks and how, once released, they are impossible to contain. His story stands as a stark warning of the dangers of cyberwar and its inherent unpredictability.