The Secret World of Cybersecurity Copy link By Joshua Eferighe and Shabtai Gold Copy link May12, 2021 Jack Nicholson was playing the Joker, the Berlin Wall was about to fall and the first internet providers were emerging. It was 1989, and while plenty was happening on the world stage, it was also the year of the first recorded ransomware attack, which occurred when evolutionary biologist Joseph Popp mailed out 20,000 tainted floppy disks to a list that included medical professionals and organizations. Promising to give them info on AIDS, the disks instead threatened to lock files on infected computers unless the user sent $189 to a P.O. Box for the PC Cyborg Corporation in Panama. Three decades later, cyberwarfare is decidedly less playful. The Colonial Pipeline, which provides the East Coast of the U.S. with nearly half of its gas and jet fuel, was recently shuttered for days after ransomware attacks. As the White House scrambles and President Joe Biden considers executive orders to strengthen cybersecurity, it’s time to get up to speed on the digital frontier’s emerging combatants and battle lines.