I meant it in a more general way: a group of horrible people taking over a core function of society and saying "If you don't do x we will do y." And they will actually do y.
As you may have gathered, my original statement is more eloquent.
It isn't more eloquent, because it's wrong. Wouldn't saying: "The new mafia." or "The new shake-down" be more accurate?
Terrorism is done for political reasons and often involves things that involve putting fear into the populace. Your general "If you don't do x we will do y." statement does cover terrorism, but it covers terrorism because it covers _all kinds of threats_. So I suppose what you really meant was: "The new threat."
But you got me thinking again: because this ransomware is targeting the infrastructure itself (national healthcare service) isn't this playing with fear too? If I was in hospital, or my friends/family, I would be acutely paranoid that medical devices will go wrong, medicine administration will go wrong, the A&E will go bonkers et cetra. I've worked in healthcare before, and this kind of domino effect is very easy to believe in.
(Funnily enough, my old organisation was making a fuss about upgrading from Windows XP just last year. A lot of my colleagues complained that this was hardly a priority)
Hmmm, that's a fair point. And now I'm wondering what my primary care last security report turned up. There's also some things that I still haven't told me doctors-- because I really don't believe in their ability to not disclose it somehow. And I want to remind everyone that you will pay for computer security no matter what--- you can either pay for it upfront, or you can pay ransoms in the future.
