CyberTerrorism - Reality or FUD? 358
Random Utinni writes "The director of the U.S. Cyber Consequences Unit (part of Homeland Security) claims that terrorist hackers are poised to create total chaos. He predicts all sorts of scenarios, from changing the formulae for medications to causing cars to explode after a few weeks of driving. Is this guy fearmongering for an increased budget, or is he on to something here?"
Chicken Littles? (Score:4, Interesting)
Although chicken littles can be right once in a while given the sheer number of warnings tossed about, and then no one listens to them when they should have
Former public servant's opinion (Score:2, Interesting)
Are you old enought to remember (Score:3, Interesting)
Yeah, if people started dying because medical drug formulas were screwed up, it would cause terror, and for a longer time then a bomb could.
Terror Via Highway Conditions Sign... (Score:5, Interesting)
Many years ago, I worked for a small company that had a contract to service the massive dot matrix signs that are spaced every few miles along the Southern California freeway network.
As part of the job, we were given a portable ascii terminal to enter test pattern data directly into the sign controller. Just for fun, we held an internal contest to think up 'What was the worst possible thing that we could type into the portable terminal for posting over the freeway at rush hour'.
The winner?
"INCOMING NUKE ATTACK - EST 15 MIN"
Just imagine the bedlam .
Confusing (Score:3, Interesting)
Certainly people running power plants or pharmaceuticals need to secure their own internal computer network to keep some guy from reaching over a secretary's desk and altering the recipe for Prozac. But calling it "cyber" terrorism is just going to scare people into allowing the government to monitor their Internet traffic. After all, you wouldn't want a terrorist breaking into a nuclear powerplant over the Internet would you?! It's just another power grab instead of sanely alerting the respective authorities.
How likely was 9/11 until it happened (Score:1, Interesting)
In a way that smoke detector the fire department tells you to install is no different. How many houses burn down? Not that many actually, the chances of you ever needing the smoke detector are remote. In fact it will most likely go off on a false alarm.
Yet few would argue with the need for smoke detectors in the kitchen. But how about your bedroom? How many electronic gizmo's are near you bed with hot power adapters?
So I don't think this guy is fearmongering. He is doing his job just as a firemen who tells you your house is going to burn down.
As human beings we got to weigh the dangers vs the benefits. Some american idiots live in hurricane zones and earthquake areas, said this dutchie living in an area that is two meters below sea level with only a natural dune protecing him (Amsterdam, Holland).
We need people to come up with the most terrible storms that can happen and then calculate what will happen to the dykes and dunes if those storm happen to coincide with a tide in a period of heavy rain.
Then we can say if we are willing to take the risk OR invest in a better defences.
This guy has the same job. Are any of the attacks possible? Well considering that a lot of people believe the recent american power failure was due to a windows security hole I think there is a possibilty. Are we willing to accept this risk or do accept it as the price of living in this world, as I accept the risk of drowning and LA's people accept the risk of being the meat in a bridge sandwiche?
But calling fearmongering is just stupid. Accepting the risks is one thing. Denial is another.
There are more scarier things on the "internet" (Score:3, Interesting)
Jokes aside, good read on CyberTerrorism before 911. Evidently CyberTerrorism isn't post 911 antics. It's been around for years now.
http://www.cnn.com/TECH/specials/hackers/cyberter
For more power and tools, not just more budget (Score:3, Interesting)
And it doesn't matter if they don't succeed as long as they brag a lot, because the public _knows_ there are more real scum out there than they can catch. And a scumbag who escapes or a cyberterrorist who hasn't done enough to get caught at it yet are both fine publicity (as long as they don't look like bleeding incompetents in the process) - it means they obviously need _more_ powers so they can catch the next one.
Re:Fearmongering for an increased budget (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm thinking particularly of the incessant decay of the US quality of life due to the usurpation of our systems of agriculture, education, health, and welfare by private interests. The failure to properly develop these systems is leading inexorably to the collapse of the USA. No one is afraid because the frog in the slow boiling pot never knows its predicament till it's too late.
People should also be trembling at the insane schemes being used to divert of the people's wealth through the "war-funnel" directly into the pockets of a few industrialists, primarily to fund the further usurpation of the people's government by corporatists.
For some reason, even after the horrors of Nazism, our current brand of Fascism doesn't seem to scare people, even as it undermines and threatens our lives in a thousand subtle ways. The air we breathe, the water we drink, the food we eat, and the society we live in are becoming increasingly dangerous to our own health. Yet no one stirs as their neighbors are snatched up from empty factory floors and sent to foreign lands to be maimed and killed to enrich Halliburton. No one even blinks as petroleum and agriculture collude to foster diseases that keep the pharmaceutical stocks ballooning.
east timor, petroleum, nafta, fertilizers, pharmaceuticals, 9-11, coyness, illegal surveillance, gmo seeds, data mining, mad cow disease, mandatory testing, guantanamo bay, rampant privatization, obtuseness, selling off the commons, executive war crimes, strip mining, the war on terra, faux news, cafta, kissinger, allende, iraq, bunker busters, missing billions, media culpa, torture, abu ghraib, reality television....
The connections are clear and simple. The machine now bleeds the people, everywhere, without conscience.
Be afraid, be very afraid.
Re:TERRORISM IS FUD PERIOD (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:TERRORISM IS FUD PERIOD (Score:2, Interesting)
If it were just FUD, no one would have died.
Do you think no one ever dies of FUD?
What's the body count of US soldiers in Iraq? Add in the body count of Iraqis, too. And all them dead bodies were caused by FUD, weren't they? No WMD, no alliance of Iraq and Al Qaida. A war over absolutely nothing of substance. Nada. Only FUD.
And one of the shames of it is that it demonstrates that the society of the USA cannot learn from its history. Go look up this phrase: "Remember the Maine"
Re:TERRORISM IS FUD PERIOD (Score:1, Interesting)
What about what just happened with Blue Frog. Someone finally finds a way to fight back against those who waste our time and annoy us to death with their spam, but the spammer's send out death threats and shutdown the system with DDos attacks. No, your right, it is just FUD.
Re:TERRORISM IS FUD PERIOD (Score:2, Interesting)
This comment thread is rife with those who it is very clear have never been in a position, nor have had someone dear to them be in a position where a sociopath wants to kill them because they believe differently than the sociopath does.
What were YOU thinking as the World Trade Centers fell? Were you complaining that a small portion of your tax dollars were going to be redirected, or were you pontificating for peace at any cost? Surrender? Complaining that your phone records were being stored by the NSA (like they have been since Carter's day)? Most of the comments in this thread referring to the war would have been flamed mercilessly in the days following that attack, but now, most of you seemed to have forgotten what it felt like to witness the attack of a foreign power (many states openly sponsor terrorism--Iraq (Saddam paid bounties to the families of suicide bombers), Iran, Saudi Arabia, etc.) on your own soil.
How much will it take for people like the author of the previous post to stop complaining and instead take notice? Dirty bomb? Nuclear attack? Virus attack? All of these have been espoused widely and publicly by Islamofascist dogma in all the countries I've already mentioned.
So wrap the comfort of a malcontent-friendly forum around you, bitch and moan some more, and hope those you're trashing are doing their jobs, and the deaths that finally galvanize the ostrich-like trolls of this forum don't include your own.