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Targeted sabotage We sit in our warm offices, do business via email, tweet about our pathetic lives, post our most intimate secrets on Facebook - and imagine that we're as safe as in our mother's womb. In reality, though, we are as exposed as if we were standing in the middle of a market square. But it's even worse than that: everyone can see us, but we can't see them.
 
The operators of the Natans nuclear power plant in Iran thought they were safe - until 21 September, when a worm crept into their control system. Anonymous hackers had programmed a really nasty virus called Stuxnet, which implants itself unnoticed in computers that control critical processes, like points in traffic management systems or valves in power plants. It then scans Windows for vulnerabilities - and sabotages the processes. We don't know the exact details of this case, but we do know precisely how a sabotage attempt like this works.
 
It's in a different league from Facebook and Twitter, that's for sure. Small fish like Hasler don't run nuclear power plants. But they can still find themselves harpooned, with very little effort. In 2007, I had a visit from the CEO of Axpo. We talked about the opportunities and risks involved in the energy debate. The conversation was printed, see Google. Two years later, when I published an essay about "elites" in Das Magazin, I was trashed in the blogosphere with remarks such as: "You can't take Hasler seriously, he's corrupt, the nuclear lobbyist works out of his fancy house in Zollikon", etc. 
 
We are all at risk of sabotage online. The problem lies in the origins of the Internet. Its original purpose was to connect a limited number of trustworthy people, to provide a quick and easy way for them to share information. That is still its purpose today, but now the net is overrun with masses of unknown and dubious players. Cyberspace is as unsecure as the Wild West was 150 years ago, but without a sheriff. Only then it was clear: everyone must defend themselves.
 
Defend ourselves? How does that work? The government protects us from everything that is evil: salmonella in fish, smoker's cough, cannabis highs, midnight binges at petrol stations, sexual advances in the workplace. But not from the Wild West that is the Internet. Self defence means: DON'T network. That's asking too much of little fish. They've always been attracted to nets.
 
Ludwig Hasler