On Sept. 6 2017, an anonymous hacker group called Dragon almost breached U.S. and European power grids. If they succeed in hacking our systems, then the group could potentially control traffic lights and blackouts, ensuing utter chaos.

According to Symantec, an American software corporation, “the energy sector has become an area of increased interest to cyber attackers over the past two years.” The hackers were active back in 2015, where they were pushing emails disguised as New Year’s Eve party invites and infected devices into the network. The trail went cold after that only to  reappear this year.

With the world becoming more and more dependent on technology, hacker groups find more and more tactics to expose our technological weaknesses. The reality is that the internet is a place that is still new, even to the most technologically advanced countries, like Japan, who may possibly be experiencing North Korean hackers.

Here in the United States, about ninety-two percent of American adults own a smartphone, not taking into account the millions of American adolescents that also own a smartphone. With nearly the whole entirety of the U.S. vulnerable to hacker groups, What will the future look like? From one source, Aaron Jaramillo, he stated that, “I’ve never been hacked before but the thought of that happening scares me”. The world needs to strengthen not only their armies for war, but their firewalls.