Around the world, cyber crime is on the rise.
By 2050, smart cities and homes will be the norm.
Your fridge will tell a drone to pick up
fresh milk when you run out, and lampposts
will change the intensity of street lights
when smartphones and therefore humans are nearby.
In this hyperconnected world, the threat cyber-criminals
pose will only grow.
In the home, smart devices, including voice assistants,
vacuum cleaners, and toilets, will
be easy pickings for hackers.
While these poorly secured gadgets do not
store sensitive data themselves, they
link to others that do and are vulnerable access
points for criminals.
Meanwhile, artificial intelligence
is a double-edged sword.
While AI systems can help to identify incoming threats,
attackers could also use them to unearth vulnerabilities.
In future, foreign powers or cyber-criminals
could cripple a country's electricity network
by taking over the AI that controls it,
or they could cut off the water supply
or even cause traffic chaos on the roads.
AI could also help identity fraudsters
by generating deepfakes.
These digital doppelgangers are currently a novelty,
but the techniques used to create them are rapidly
improving, with increasingly realistic depictions of people.
So far, they've mostly been used as part of revenge pornography.
But a realistic digital avatar could
be a useful cover for wheedling key details such as passwords
or bank details out of targets.
But the struggle to keep systems secure is not hopeless.
By 2050, much poorly written and outdated code
will be removed and replaced by more secure alternatives.
Even passwords could be phased out, obsolete and less secure
than facial recognition software.
Deepfakes could be beaten by constant verification systems
that track eye movement, faces, and keystrokes
to ensure the person behind the keyboard
is who they claim to be.
But that risks putting cybersecurity over privacy.
Policymakers and designers must work
hard to ensure that this does not become a binary choice.