Explore the irreversible impact of technological innovation with Mikko Hypponen as he joins Sean Martin and Marco Ciappelli to discuss the duality of progress—from the ethical dilemmas of ransomware to the transformative rise of AI. This episode challenges you to rethink how we navigate the trade-offs of innovation in a world where the future is already here.
Guest: Mikko Hypponen, Chief Research Officer (CRO) at WithSecure [@WithSecure]
On LinkedIn | https://www.linkedin.com/in/hypponen/
On Twitter | https://twitter.com/mikko
Hosts:
Sean Martin, Co-Founder at ITSPmagazine [@ITSPmagazine] and Host of Redefining CyberSecurity Podcast [@RedefiningCyber]
On ITSPmagazine | https://www.itspmagazine.com/sean-martin
Marco Ciappelli, Co-Founder at ITSPmagazine [@ITSPmagazine] and Host of Redefining Society Podcast & Audio Signals Podcast
On ITSPmagazine | https://www.itspmagazine.com/itspmagazine-podcast-radio-hosts/marco-ciappelli
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Episode Notes
During the AISA CyberCon 2024 in Melbourne, Sean Martin and Marco Ciappelli sat down with Mikko Hypponen to discuss the irreversible nature of technology, the challenges it presents, and its impact on society. The discussion focused not on the event itself but on broader issues and ideas that shape our relationship with technological innovation.
Mikko emphasized that once a technology is invented, it cannot be uninvented. Strong encryption was one of his key examples: it secures communication for individuals and organizations, yet it is also used by criminals to evade detection. This duality underscores the reality that every innovation carries benefits and drawbacks. Mikko noted, “Even if we wanted to get rid of strong encryption, it’s not possible. Criminals would still use it.”
The conversation also touched on artificial intelligence. Mikko highlighted how innovations build on past advancements. Decades of progress in digitizing information, developing the internet, and creating cloud infrastructure have made today’s AI capabilities possible. He reflected on how large technological revolutions often take longer than anticipated to develop but eventually surpass expectations in scope.
The group explored societal challenges posed by technology, such as the impact of social media on youth and ethical questions around ransomware. Mikko pointed to the breach of the Vastamo psychotherapy center in Finland, where hackers stole sensitive patient records and demanded ransoms from both the clinic and its patients. He argued that, in some cases, paying the ransom might result in less harm, even though it contradicts the principle of not funding criminal activity.
Marco raised the issue of preparing young people for social media, comparing it to teaching a child to drive before handing over car keys. The discussion emphasized the importance of gradually introducing tools and systems while fostering understanding of their risks and responsibilities.
Marco noted how foundational technologies, like the internet, enable further innovations. Mikko agreed, citing how AI’s rapid rise was made possible by decades of previous work. He stressed that each technological leap requires the groundwork laid by earlier developments, creating platforms for new ideas to flourish.
The group also discussed the limitations of regulation. For example, cryptocurrencies, built on mathematical principles, cannot be fundamentally altered by laws. Instead, regulation can only address interactions between real-world currencies and blockchain systems. Mikko observed, “Math doesn’t care about your laws and regulations.”
The conversation underscored that innovation is inherently a trade-off. Every advancement brings both opportunities and challenges, and society must navigate these complexities thoughtfully. Mikko highlighted that while the benefits of technologies like encryption, AI, and the internet are significant, they also create new risks.
Sean, Marco, and Mikko’s discussion emphasized the importance of understanding and adapting to technological change. While we can’t control the pace of innovation, we can shape how it integrates into our lives and institutions. This ongoing dialogue remains essential as society continues to grapple with the implications of progress.
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The Irreversible Impact of Technology: The Ethical Dilemmas We Face When We Can’t Uninvent Our Creations | An Australian Cyber Conference 2024 in Melbourne Conversation with Mikko Hypponen | On Location Coverage with Sean Martin and Marco Ciappelli
Please note that this transcript was created using AI technology and may contain inaccuracies or deviations from the original audio file. The transcript is provided for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as a substitute for the original recording, as errors may exist. At this time, we provide it “as it is,” and we hope it can be helpful for our audience.
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Marco Ciappelli: [00:00:00] Did you hit record, Sean?
Sean Martin: That's the topic of our chat, isn't it? Boom, doom. Tell somebody not to do something, we do it anyway. That's exactly what it is.
Marco Ciappelli: Sounds like that's what it is. Correct.
Sean Martin: So here we are, we're rolling. We are? Are you sure? I think so.
Marco Ciappelli: Do you want to double check?
Sean Martin: I know we're rolling.
Marco Ciappelli: Alright, good.
Sean Martin: And, uh, we're here in Melbourne. And, uh, Our good friend, Nico. Good to see you, man.
Mikko Hypponen: Thanks. Thanks for having me again, guys.
Marco Ciappelli: There is something about running into people that, you know, you've seen other part of the world and, you know, in one day. So Joe, you, Joe Carson, he says hi, by the way, just saw him now.
Mikko Hypponen: Excellent. So we keep meeting each other in different time zones, right?
Marco Ciappelli: I know, I know. It's, uh, it's kind of cool. Different weather, different places. Never know what the weather is going to be here
Sean Martin: in different ways.
Marco Ciappelli: Well, this is a different conversation.
Sean Martin: Or a different conversation in the same way, or same conversation in a [00:01:00] different way?
I
Mikko Hypponen: don't know
Sean Martin: what you're talking about.
Mikko Hypponen: Did you know how many people live in Melbourne? It's over 5 million. 5 million, yeah. Really? Yeah, which is the same that lives in Finland, so it's The whole country, though. Based on my count, it's a
big
city.
Sean Martin: Are they equal? Number of, uh, reindeer to kangaroo. Ah, that's a great question.
I'll get back to you on that. I think we'll have to follow up. But, uh, this is fun. It's fun. You're always, always a good conversation. You think, you think in ways that are super important. And, and get people to also think. Which is why we love chatting with you. And, so, this year's talk here at Australia CyberCon.
What, what's it all about?
Mikko Hypponen: Well, I tried to build something new. I spoke here exactly a year ago in 2023, CyberCon. Then I spoke about AI. Um, I did a um, RSA CISO bootcamp briefing here yesterday and [00:02:00] I recycled one of my slides from last year. Because last year I had a slide which said that, you know, large language models will eventually pick up programming languages well enough that they will be able to find That's what I said last year.
And I, I was challenged after my talk here in Melbourne by two different, um, local guys and, you know, that's not going to happen. And, you know, they will never be able to find zero days. And that's going to take 40 years. Like, shut up, Mingo. Well, it's been a year. It's been 12 months. We have four zero days found by AI.
Two of them by Google, one of them by Grospel, one of them by this Indian, um, researcher. So, so it's happening. But I didn't want to do The keynote on the big stage about the same topic. So I'm not going to do just an AI talk. I wanted to expand a little bit about it. So my title for the keynote in Australian Cyber Conference 2024 is going to be um, We can't go back.
It's about how once we invent [00:03:00] something, we are stuck with the invention. We cannot un invent things. Even if the invention turns out to be a bad invention, we're stuck with it. And every technological revolution brings us benefits and problems And we can't get just the benefits and then in my talk, I go through a gazillion different examples on how it actually works out.
Marco Ciappelli: Yeah, probably. Probably the guy invented the wheel. Somebody was like, what the hell? Yeah. You know, I just could run on my feet that sucks.
Sean Martin: But yet we're still using that. The tracks in, like, from Pompeii where the distance of the wheels between the carriage became the distance of the wheels on the, on the trailer.
Marco Ciappelli: Apparently. I'm not sure that's the truth. I don't know. Anyway. It's stick. But,
Sean Martin: I was just recently there and the tracks from those wheels are very prevalent in Pompeii.
Mikko Hypponen: Yeah?
Sean Martin: And you're only going to ride those streets with those.
Mikko Hypponen: You actually were [00:04:00] there? Yeah.
Sean Martin: He's pulling our leg, right?
Mikko Hypponen: I had no idea.
Sean Martin: I stopped listening to him a lot.
I was working from home. Yeah, sure. But anyway, my point is, that technology is literally embedded in that city. Right. True. You're stuck with it.
Mikko Hypponen: But a great example on how the technological innovation, we can't get rid of it even if we wanted to. For example, strong encryption. Strong encryption, which clearly is very beneficial.
We all use it all the time, but at the very same time, bad people use it as well. The fact that terrorists or criminal organizations can encrypt their data so that law enforcement and intelligence agencies can follow what they're saying, that, I mean, I think everybody agrees that is a problem, but we have no solution for it because we cannot un invent an innovation like that.
Even if we wanted to get rid of strong encryption, let's say we pass [00:05:00] laws that, you know You must not use strong encryption. Of course, criminals would still use it because that's what criminals do.
Marco Ciappelli: You can't just erase it.
Mikko Hypponen: I mean, criminals are criminals because they break the laws. So we could try to do something else.
Okay, let's remove all applications like, you know, Signal and WhatsApp and let's remove SSL from all the browsers. Well, you can walk into any library anywhere in the world and get a math 101 book and it will explain to you how to implement public key encryption because it's been invented. We can't get rid of it.
So every innovation is, we're stuck with it forever, even if it turns out to be a bad innovation. Clearly, strong encryption is more good than bad. But, for example, Tor. We could argue that Tor, I would say we've seen more trouble because of Tor than upside. And I know perfectly well the history of Tor. I know people use it in, you know, totalitarian countries to gain access to public internet.
You can publish information freely. But, [00:06:00] like in my daily job, I see the downsides all too often. Not just the obvious things like ransomware and all the leaked sites, but trading of stolen credentials, credit card information, and worse, weapons trucks, you say, say it. And we can't get rid of that either. So every technological innovation brings us benefits and problems.
Sometimes the problems are bigger than the benefits, but even then it's very hard to get rid of that technology.
Marco Ciappelli: Can you adjust it? If you figure out that there's more negative than positive, does society, or legislators, or society itself, culture, does some adjustment to make it better?
Mikko Hypponen: Well, sometimes you can't adjust.
Think about blockchain. Think about cryptocurrencies. Think about Bitcoin, alright? That's a currency based on math. Real world currencies, like your dollars or my euro, they're based on politics, right? If something is based on [00:07:00] politics, you can regulate it, you can change it with laws, you can change everything around it.
If it's based on math, you can change nothing about it. Math doesn't care about your laws and regulations. It's sort of like, if somebody, a country could pass a law which would change the value of pi or p. So instead of 3. 14, we could pass a law, it's 4. 14, we could pass a law like that, it changes nothing.
Marco Ciappelli: You can try to allow it, but you can't change it.
Mikko Hypponen: We can try to regulate, like, blockchain traffic or bitcoin traffic. Right. But the invention
itself, you're
not going to change it. Yeah. The only thing we can regulate with cryptocurrencies or blockchain is the interaction with real world currencies and cryptocurrencies.
It's like exchanges. That you can do. regulate that you can like affect with laws, but traffic inside the blockchain, it completely ignores your laws and regulations because it's based on math and math doesn't care.
Sean Martin: How far does this go for [00:08:00] you? Clearly, we're talking about technological innovations. When we start getting into AI creating stuff for
Marco Ciappelli: us
Sean Martin: and changing perhaps the way we use Can that be undone?
Mikko Hypponen: No. I'm sorry, but it can't. I mean, it's interesting when you look at large technological revolution, and you take a step back and look at how it all happened. Because AI is happening right now, and it's kind of hard to set the focus. Like, how quick is this revolution? And what exactly is it changing right now?
Um, The one theme I keep seeing in every large technological revolution is that we tend to overestimate the speed, but underestimate the size of the revolution. And this very easily creates this hype cycle and a bubble, and I would argue we are dead center in the middle [00:09:00] of an AI bubble right now. And the easy comparison, of course, is the dot com boom, or dot com hype, 1999 2000, where the best example to current, you know, younger people on how big it was is simply to show the all time stock chart of companies like Intel or Cisco, whose all time high stock value still today is in 1999.
Intel has never reached their all time high. Cisco has never reached their all time high, which was 25 years ago. That's how big the bubble was. And I have a feeling that NVIDIA's All time high, 25 years from now will still be in 2024.
Sean Martin: Interesting, because I've heard this comparison before, where the internet enabled the creation of that bubble.
The bubble burst, the internet stayed.
Mikko Hypponen: Yeah, and it stayed for a reason. I mean, okay, what [00:10:00] caused the bubble? It was great expectation about this new technology, which is going to change the world. That's why investors wanted to put money into it. So, what were the promises, concrete promises that were given to investors about the internet in 1999?
Well, it was promises like, eventually people will be doing online shopping. Eventually, everybody will be watching movies and TV online on the internet. And of course, duh, that all happened. All the promises came true and much, much more. But, and here's the kicker, it didn't happen in 1999 or 2000 or 2001 or 2002 or 2003.
As I said, these revolutions take longer than we think, but then they're bigger than we think. An example on how it's bigger, in 1999, Internet meant a desktop computer and a big CRT screen with Netscape. That's Internet. Nobody was thinking that this is going to be Internet. Everybody, like most of the people on the [00:11:00] planet, Carry an internet tablet in their pocket, and this is the most common way of accessing the online content, but that's what happened.
So They take longer breath than we think but then it's different and bigger than we think it's going to happen with AI as well
Marco Ciappelli: And what about the fact that they become? The new invention become the platform on which other invention take place I mean, I was having a conversation last year at CES Mm hmm With somebody from Nokia and we were talking about how long it took for the internet to create the infrastructure Right and how in one year at the time or less Everybody had already access to generative AI.
Yeah, because there was already this The infrastructure for that. Yeah, so you touch on that as well.
Mikko Hypponen: Yeah, I do because these revolutions major revolutions Happened slowly, slowly, slowly, suddenly. That's, that's what happened with AI very, very, very obviously. Because we've been waiting for this for [00:12:00] decades.
The first time I read about artificial intelligence was in 1983. Nineteen, god damn, eighty three. I was thirteen years old. I still have the magazine. Like, Popular Science Magazine published back home in Finland, which had an eight page article about how one day we will be able, even more importantly, they got this right, one day Mankind's knowledge, information, everything we collectively have learned will no longer be on paper.
One day it's going to be data, which, that's what happened. Like in 1983, everything was in books, right? You know, it was on paper. You can't feed paper to computers. Well today, everything, all the knowledge we've ever built is data. Fun fact, even that 1983 magazine is available online today as a PDF. The publishing house still exists, they've scanned their old archives, like, even, obviously all the new information we generate is natively data, but even all the old information.
So, we needed the revolution of being able to [00:13:00] digitize information, and the revolution of internet, and the revolution of cloud, for the AI revolution to be even possible. And that's why it took so long. We didn't require the computing power which we only now have at our disposal. And the fact that all of mankind's knowledge throughout the centuries is now data.
We can and have fed it into computers.
Sean Martin: I did a post on this the other day. I want to say it's 1999. I was at Symantec at the time. We bought IBM's antivirus business.
Mikko Hypponen: Right, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Sean Martin: Which included What we branded as the digital immune system, which was Watson. Right. Yeah. In the cloud. Yeah. Validating or analyzing malware, writing signatures, because there's a lot of things.
It was AI. Yeah. From IBM. Not generating AI, but AI. Not generating AI. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, that's amazing. Doing security.
Mikko Hypponen: IBM Antivirus still has my favorite user interface of all time. Remember what the Windows version looked [00:14:00] like? You gotta explain it to the viewers.
Sean Martin: I'll let you do that.
Mikko Hypponen: They had a Windows box, a user interface, which had a massive button.
One button, which says, press here to scan your system. To make it as easy and as obvious as possible. You start the antivirus, there's one button, and you press it, and it scans your computer. Beautiful. That's it? That's all you had to do? It gets the user interface and user experience reward from me.
Unfortunately, the product didn't survive.
Sean Martin: Yeah, no, I didn't. Oh, yeah. Any stories behind that? I'm sure. Yeah.
Marco Ciappelli: So what is the lesson? What is the moral of this story that you're that you want people from your talk? Well, here that you're already done, but even when you do it again, what you want them to walk away with
Mikko Hypponen: to understand that in technology and in innovations and in revolutions, everything is a trade off, but we will not be able to get it.
Just the upsides, no matter how [00:15:00] much we'd like to, of course, we'd like to get just the benefits, none of the problems, but they are bolted on together. And this will apply, I'm confident, to all future technological revolutions as well. Because it happened with social media, it happened with online access, it happened with mobile phones.
Look how we're glued to the screen, especially maybe younger, maybe us, but also the younger people are glued. To the doom scrolling, where there's always a new funny video around a topic we didn't even know we loved, but it somehow figured it out. So everything we can innovate brings us upsides and downsides, and we just have to accept
it.
Sean Martin: And they're working on legislation here in Australia to ban social media, I believe, right?
Marco Ciappelli: Well, not ban it, but not allow under 16 years old to access social media. How do you feel about this? Well, that's, that's the question I asked a few people today. Myself, how do I feel? I think [00:16:00] that the, the, the right, uh, metaphor was JJ, which is the, the, the person we interviewed today.
She does talk about 10 tasks that people can have to be cyber secure, that they're nothing to do with IT and then talks about kids online. She said, you don't just give. Somebody a driver license and say here the keys of the car, right? There is a cultural process That takes time where you start teaching a kid.
Hey Look at the street left and right when you cross the street. There is a traffic light Go on the bike, you know, here's where the stop sign is. And so her thing is like you don't understand you don't all of a sudden Get somebody a car, right? So her position was Yes, social media are dangerous, but you can't just shut it down.
And then when you become 16 years old, here you go, social media, you're not trained to it. So that's kind of my, [00:17:00] my approach.
Mikko Hypponen: I'm also interested in how they define social media. Right. We have, you know, the obvious ones like, you know, TikToks and Instagrams, but what about like YouTube comments? What about IRC?
Teams? Is that social media? I,
Marco Ciappelli: I don't know.
Mikko Hypponen: Messenger. They also passed another brand new law here in Australia yesterday. Actually, they have the 2024, uh, a cyber bill, I believe, which now makes it mandatory for companies above a certain size to report to the government when they pay ransom payments for ransomware, it doesn't outlaw it.
You're allowed to pay, but you got to let them know. You got to let them know. How do you feel about that?
I think it's, I think it's a good move actually.
Marco Ciappelli: Really?
Better than
not allow it?
Mikko Hypponen: I don't think we should outlaw it. I [00:18:00] don't think we, okay, let me give you an example on this. Um, three years ago, three and a half years ago, we had the largest single crime in our country. When you look at the number of victims in one single crime, 31, 980 victims in one single crime.
This was the Vastamo psychotherapy center breach that happened in Finland. A large private psychotherapy center was hacked. The attacker stole all the notes, was blackmailing first the center, then the individual victims. Give me Bitcoin or I'll leak your shrinks notes. A lot of the victims were underage, were small children even, all kinds of like awful stuff was there and in the end it all was leaked.
Which resulted, reportedly, I don't have first hand knowledge, but reportedly multiple suicides happened because of this case. And I would argue that the psychotherapy center should have paid the ransom.
Marco Ciappelli: In that particular case.
Mikko Hypponen: I would argue there would have been less damage. [00:19:00] I'm not a fan of giving money to criminals at all.
I always advise don't pay the ransom. We all know it's going to become a bigger problem the more ransoms are paid. But, for example, for that case, I would argue that they should have paid the ransom.
Marco Ciappelli: So What is the bigger cost? Right? Yeah, you would have to figure out I mean, like a hospital. Is it gonna kill people?
Sean Martin: We've had this conversation too. Yeah. Hospitals, ransom. Yeah. It's, these are complicated cases and
Mikko Hypponen: there's no strict rules. It really would be one on one cases on what's really happening, but have, to say a law which just bans it, I don't think that's the right solution.
Marco Ciappelli: Which brings you back to the beginning, I think of, uh, when you invent something bad or good, you can't just forget about it.
Mikko Hypponen: There's several innovations in play with ransomware. We had to innovate strong encryption. It wouldn't work without strong encryption. We had to innovate Tor. That's where the leak sites run. And of course, [00:20:00] cryptocurrencies, because that's how they collect the payments. So, yep, these technologies can be used for, to build great things or to build awful things.
Marco Ciappelli: And there's always been historically some people like you can see it now with artificial intelligence, generative AI, and maybe the actors that don't want to clone their voice or their, their, their image, the writers, uh, the looted is back in the, during the, the industrial revolution, they went and crushed the machine.
But guess what? We're still machines and AI is still there. So there is always going to be a resistance and it's understandable. Somebody may lose a job to try to stop progress. Is that another lesson there?
Mikko Hypponen: In most languages, the word for computer comes out of Latin, computare, which means to calculate. So in English, computer is a calculator, right?
Yep. Um, In other languages, like, [00:21:00] of toys in Germany, it would be a datron, a data handling machine. In Norwegian, it would be datamachine, a machine which has information. But in Finnish, my home language, it's tietokone, which means knowledge machine. It's the machine which knows. And I've worked with computers all my life.
And computers have known me Nothing. They've only done exactly what you tell them to do. And now, finally, now, that's starting to change, isn't it? Now we are actually building devices that, no, even, even better, if you remember how Douglas Adams explained in Hitchhiker's Guide to Galaxy a guide that everybody has in their pocket, which has answers to everything.
We've built that. You have it. You have it in your pocket. It's real. Isn't it wild? We're living in the future, guys. But, the future has upsides and downsides, and we can't just get the upsides.
The future is [00:22:00] now.
Sean Martin: The future is now? The future is now. That's, that's the theme here? That's the theme of the conference.
Is that how you're going to wrap this?
I don't know, you can keep talking. Oh,
Marco Ciappelli: I'm cool, I don't know, I think Mikko has something to say. You heard it here first, the future is now. The future is now.
Sean Martin: Alright. Well, I think, uh, Yeah, clearly we could talk to you for hours, Mika, but we won't keep you. We'll, uh, we'll let this ruminate, uh, for folks.
And, uh, scare many of them, I'm sure.
Mikko Hypponen: There was nothing scary here. It's all true.
Sean Martin: Well, just the idea that you can't go back. There's no eraser, there's no
Mikko Hypponen: No
time machine.
Sean Martin: No time machine. No going back.
Marco Ciappelli: Well, you're already in the future and then in the present and then in the future and then in the present.
And you can't go back in the past.
Mikko Hypponen: Maybe this is why I like retro gaming so much. That takes you back to a more innocent time. What's your favorite one? I'm very, very much into pinball nowadays. Pinball? Very retro. I actually play [00:23:00] competitively. I just participated in the Finnish championship last week. No way!
I try, I try.
Marco Ciappelli: We have a tradition.
Mikko Hypponen: We do.
Marco Ciappelli: When we go to RSA conference, I don't know if you've ever been to San Francisco, there is a museum of arcade.
All right. So we go there and we challenge each other. I usually win. I'm not champion. Are you inviting me next time? We are. We want to see a true pro how he plays.
Sean Martin: I won't let you win, but we will be beaten no less. I'll kick your ass first. Thank you. I'll take you up on that. All right.
Marco Ciappelli: Miko, always a pleasure.
Always a great conversation.
I'll And you
guys stay tuned. There's more conversation like this coming up here from Melbourne, Australia. Stay tuned. Subscribe and we'll be right back with more. Cool. Love it.
Mikko Hypponen: Like, subscribe and hit the bell. Exactly.