Cybersecurity Threats From Online Gaming

The world has fast become a global village thanks to the Internet, satellites, undersea cables and so on. 

Anytime connectivity of all things and all people across the globe is becoming reality and that is great great! The possibilities and opportunities are endless only limited by our ability to imagine! However!

Idiom: The two sides of a coin. Or the two faced Roman Janus who presides over peace and war!

I strongly believe this intense battle or arms race between good and evil can be won to the great benefit of humanity! Human ingenuity will do it as time goes on! Criminals, bad actors, or government agencies will mostly  loose! It is only a matter of time!

Potentially, in a a few years or in 1-2 decades we could possibly make global elections possible. Global direct democracy is on the horizon! We should thank the gamers! 😊

"From the emergence of the video game “Pong” in 1972 to the release of “Hogwart’s Legacy” in 2023, the video gaming industry has come a long way. With a revenue of over US$227 billion in 2022, gaming is no longer the niche industry it was once thought to be. The number of gamers in the world is expected to reach a figure of 3.32 billion by 2024. This recent surge in growth has, in a large part, been a result a of the COVID-19 pandemic when the market expanded by about 26 percent between 2019 and 2021.

However, this popular form of recreation has also imperilled cybersecurity. There has been a surge in cyberattacks on the gaming sector, with an increase of 167 percent in web application attacks in 2021 alone. In 2022, the gaming industry became the biggest target of Distributed Denial of Service attacks, accounting for about 37 percent of all such attacks. Account takeovers, cheating mods, credit card theft, and fraud are all issues faced by gamers on a regular basis. The most alarming development, however, was the leaking of secret documents in April 2023 containing confidential US Intelligence on a videogame chat server, in what has come to be described as the worst Pentagon leak in years. This just goes to show how ignorance of this threat could have unforeseen and potentially catastrophic consequences, even from a national security perspective. ..."

Cybersecurity Threats From Online Gaming – Analysis – Eurasia Review

Werden die Schweizer Bürger irrational?

Es gab anscheinend kürzlich mal wieder Volksabstimmungen in der Schweiz. In der Vergangenheit konnte man sich auf die Besonnenheit der Schweizer Bürger sehr verlassen. Die neuesten Abstimmungsergebnisse lassen daran Zweifel aufkommen!

Hatte leider keine Zeit tiefer einzugehen oder Recherchen dazu anzustellen!

Die Bürger stimmten für die Aufnahme der Klimaneutralität bis 2050 und einer OECD Mindeststeuer für Unternehmen in die Verfassung.

Beides ist sehr kontrovers! Das Letztere ist gerade aus der Schweizer Sicht eher sehr nachteilig!

Verkehrte (Politik-) Welt - Avenir Suisse

Que Vadis Switzerland?

Posted: 6/23/2019  Updated: 7/1/2019

Update Of 7/1/2019

In my original post below, I overlooked to mention that the Swiss people apparently are also more willing to make severe and detrimental concessions to the gun control obsessed EU (S1). 

More recently, the EU is forcing its stricter capital markets and stock exchange rules on Switzerland. Unfortunately, it seems Switzerland is again caving in! 

Original Post

I have been in awe for decades about this little country Switzerland that managed so well to survive in peace for several hundreds of years. Stories like the famous Wilhelm Tell and the Rütlischwur are still resonating today.

Switzerland A Paragon In More Than One Way

Let’s briefly remind us again why Switzerland is so important to the world:

1. Switzerland is a paragon of limited and small government: E.g. Switzerland has consistently one of the lowest levels of government spending as a share of the economy among the OECD countries
2. Switzerland is a paragon of federalism and decentralized government power: The Swiss have genuine federalism and decentralized government
3. Switzerland is a paragon of self defense: Switzerland has one of the highest gun ownership rate in the world. It also has one of the lowest lowest homicide rate in the world 
4. Switzerland is a living laboratory of direct democracy. Referenda are frequent and the outcomes are in most cases very reasonable 
5. Switzerland has been for centuries a master of reason, common sense, and pragmatism in politics

Too Many Things Went Wrong

But all is not well in recent times with this small country to my great dismay.

Switzerland has succumbed to too many really bad compromises to please e.g. the U.S. or the European Union:

1. The famous Swiss bank secrecy law was watered down
2. The hegemon EU has directly or indirectly imposed lots of its burdensome regulations on Switzerland. Most recently, the Swiss voted for tighter gun control in a referendum

I have previously blogged about Switzerland here, here. I had planned a few more posts on Switzerland in the past, but never got around it. Therefore, e.g. some of my sources below are a bit dated.

Giving Up Economic Freedom For What!

Over the last two or three decades, Switzerland has unnecessarily given up substantial economic freedoms to conform with EU laws and regulations that are actually stifling economic freedom (see S3). It is totally incomprehensible that the citizens of Switzerland agreed to this subjugation! Wilhelm Tell is spinning in his grave!

“Dieses Recht [EU Recht] ist oft unternehmensfeindlich und schützt einseitig die Konsumenten, die Anleger und die Arbeitnehmer.” (S3; translated: The law of the EU is often adversarial to businesses and biased in protecting consumers, stockholders, and employees)

Abuse Of Direct Democracy

There are reports that the famous direct democracy in Switzerland has been perverted to promote the expansion of centralized government and a larger socialist welfare state in Switzerland (S2).

One of the reasons reported why it was possible to subvert the direct democracy in Switzerland is the low threshold of initiating a referendum, which used to be for many years 100,000 signatures (S2).

Swiss Bank Secrecy

Finally, it seems it dawns on the Swiss people how foolish they were to give in to pressure from the U.S. and Europe to relax the famous bank secrecy laws in Switzerland.

It appears it was in particular the most unlawful U.S. president since Nixon and the most socialist U.S. president since Franklin D. Roosevelt, i.e. Barack Obama, who pushed the Swiss over using means like extortion! What a disgrace for the Switzerland! (see S4). As the author of Source No. 4 points out this was a complete disaster for Switzerland! Not only that, e.g. the Isle of Man (a notorious tax haven) fought back much more effectively than Switzerland! It would have served Switzerland so much better to oppose this pretentious President Obama full force!

Apparently, Switzerland had several so called whistle blowers that purportedly exposed the illegal dealings of Swiss banks! Here again, the Swiss failed to defend their businesses!

Sure a significant number of infamous and lesser known, bloody dictators and their cronies have hidden their ill gotten money in Switzerland. On the other hand, many honest and reasonable people were able to protect their assets by moving them to Switzerland!

Sources (S):

1. Why the Swiss Voted for More Gun Control (published 6/19/2019)
2. Die Schweiz: Freiheit oder Mehrheitsdiktatur? (published Nov. 2018)
3. Verteidigung der freiheitlichen Wirtschaftsordnung Das internationale Recht beeinflusst zunehmend die Wirtschaftspolitik. Die Selbstbestimmungsinitiative gibt hier Gegensteuer (published 4/13/2015)
4. Geschichte eines kollektiven Versagens Zwar war der internationale Druck enorm, trotzdem ist die Schweiz am Ausgang der Affäre um das Bankgeheimnis selber schuld. Eine kritische Aufarbeitung tut not. (6/15/2015)
5. Die Schweiz spielt mit dem Feuer (7/1/19)