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?"
Dem cyberterrerrists (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Dem cyberterrerrists (Score:2)
Looks like some of the formatting is broken, but it is a good read. (IMHO)
Decently written, and even today somewhat realistic version of what may or may not happen in such a scenario.
Re:Dem cyberterrerrists (Score:2)
Re:Dem cyberterrerrists (Score:2)
He's a subscriber. That theoretically gives him at least 15 minutes to whip up a low-quality, yet hillarious cartoon before posting is allowed.
TERRORISM IS FUD PERIOD (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:TERRORISM IS FUD PERIOD (Score:5, Funny)
Re:TERRORISM IS FUD PERIOD (Score:5, Insightful)
Power, money, Jesus, hot and cold running hookers.
I think that pretty much covers it.
One of these things is not like the others. One of these things just doesn't belong. . .
KFG
Re:TERRORISM IS FUD PERIOD (Score:3, Informative)
Re:TERRORISM IS FUD PERIOD (Score:3, Funny)
Sounds like quite a party.
Re:TERRORISM IS FUD PERIOD (Score:5, Insightful)
Try telling that to the families of the 2000+ people that died on 9/11/01.
Re:TERRORISM IS FUD PERIOD (Score:5, Insightful)
~2k from 9/11 + 2.5k in Iraq(Which seems silly but we can add them in if you want...) / 6 = ~750 / year.
So my annual risk from TERRORISM is about 250,000,000 / 750 US deaths / year or so my risk is around 1 in 333,333 per year.
Let's compare that to:
"Normal" Homicide which kills over 20,000 people in the US every year. Which means I am 27 times as likely to be killed by someone in the US vs. a foreign TERRORIST.
Motor Vehicle Crashes: 26,000+ US deaths / year aka 35x as likely to kill me vs. Al Qaeda, yet I still drive.
Poor Diet and Physical Inactivity: 365,000 US deaths / year aka 467x as likely to kill me which is why I work out and try to keep a healthy diet.
Yet we are spending how much to fight TERRORISM?
Re:TERRORISM IS FUD PERIOD (Score:3, Funny)
Re:TERRORISM IS FUD PERIOD (Score:3)
Re:TERRORISM IS FUD PERIOD (Score:3)
I cannot find anything close to such a quote anywhere. Where you got that from?
Anyways, the Bush administration would gladly give bin Laden the one dollar just so they can spend the million dollar on "terrorism".
Re:TERRORISM IS FUD PERIOD (Score:4, Informative)
No you should exclude the deaths of americans in Iraq, since I presume you've never been to Iraq and never will (and for the people who do, their odds should be calculated differently). If you calculate the odds for an american to die from terrorism, well normally you should use last year's figure but that wouldn't fun because IIRC from 2002 to now no american died from terrorism on the american territory (correct me if i'm wrong) so let's just use almost 5-year old 9/11 so you can have odds different than 0.
So with 3,000 death (from wikipedia : "At least 2,986 people were killed in total") for about 300,000,000 people (from wikipedia : "As of July 2006, there are an estimated 298,444,215 people in the United States") in 6 years, you have, provided that we consider that another 9/11 might happen within the next 6 years, which is quite unlikely, 1 out of 600,000 odds of dying from terrorism within a one-year period.
No good reason to be scared, according to me, but if you're one of the persons who think they are likely to win lottery, you should be crapping your pants.
Re:TERRORISM IS FUD PERIOD (Score:5, Insightful)
"Really?"
"See any tigers around?"
Re:TERRORISM IS FUD PERIOD (Score:3, Informative)
The fact is there's been a sharp rise in global terrorism [washingtonpost.com].
Things are going so well that the State Department has ceased publishing terrorist statistics as they're legally mandated to do.
U.S. ports are extremely vulnerable [msn.com]. Airports are still vulnerable [govtsecurity.com].
I'd say you should be counting yourself lucky, not well-protected.
Re:TERRORISM IS FUD PERIOD (Score:2)
Re:TERRORISM IS FUD PERIOD (Score:2)
Also remember that most car accidents are Darwinism at work. A good driver can prevent being involved in car accidents (100% of those caused by him, and most of those caused by other drivers through defensive driving, etc.).
Re:TERRORISM IS FUD PERIOD (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not saying we shouldn't combat the terrorists, but I'm saying we should remember than their main weapon against us is fear. Contrast that against, say, the Soviets, whose main weapon against us was hydrogen bombs. I'll take the terrorists any day.
Re:TERRORISM IS FUD PERIOD (Score:2)
they are being used to justify basically anything the american government wants to loegalize to suppress its peoples rights. the reason? who knows..
Re:TERRORISM IS FUD PERIOD (Score:2)
Re:TERRORISM IS FUD PERIOD (Score:2)
Thats not the most interesting number, the number you should be interested in is How many people will give their lives to take back the lost freedom in the future.
From what i hear, other countries where such fights have already happened or are still ongoing, its a hell of a lot more then 2000
Re:TERRORISM IS FUD PERIOD (Score:2)
Ahhh! The corpses of the Twin Towers victims. Being waved around loudly on facist poles since Sep-2001.
I certainly can't think of a more ignoble way to spend the afterlife than being constantly invocated by the living to justify their actions. If a seance ever works, these guys are going to be pissed.
Re:TERRORISM IS FUD PERIOD (Score:2)
To each their own I guess. I'll have you know that my will specifically mentions that my death shall be constantly invoked by the living to justify their actions and that my corpse shall be "waved a
Re:TERRORISM IS FUD PERIOD (Score:5, Funny)
Since when has it become fashionable for Polish political extremists to wear corpses? That seems like a pretty big public health problem.
-matthew
Re:TERRORISM IS FUD PERIOD (Score:4, Insightful)
I was responding to the statement that "terrorism is fud period". For people that lost relatives in the terrorist attacks, it's more than just FUD period. I said nothing about taking freedoms away, etc. I wasn't even responding to the article.
And you are just as guilty as our President for spreading your idiotic rhetoric.
I said nothing about politics. You as a human should be able to see that the previous post was extremely insensative and just plain old not true. Terrorism is more than FUD. If it were just FUD, no one would have died. Even if you hate Bush, etc....you should really think about what you say.
Its too late, get freaking over it.
Forget about politics for a minute and just think about what you're saying. It's too late, [your family member is dead], get freaking over it. I'm not trying to justify any policies, etc. I'm just pointing out that terrorism is real. I'm sorry that it's an inconvenient fact, but the truth is the truth.
Re:TERRORISM IS FUD PERIOD (Score:5, Insightful)
The fear of terrorism is real!
The importance given to terrorism and the weight of that fear are unreal (even surreal).
Nobody denies that terrorism exists or that it has affected the lives of several people.
Then again, lightning bolts are real too and they have affected the lives of several people.
Still, governments are hardly curtailing people's liberty to go out on a storm or forcing then to wear a chain-mail suit when doing so.
Yet some people are willing to accept and even agree that, to protect themselfs from terrorism, more and more power should be delivered in the hands of some while at the same time making those that get that power less and less accountable.
How did we, as members of "democratic" societies, managed to get even the twisted caricature of democracy that we have instead of police states if beyond me.
Re:TERRORISM IS FUD PERIOD (Score:2)
FUD IS FUD PERIOD (Score:2)
the term [FUD]is being used to quickly dismiss anything "the american government" has to say without providing supporting arguments. the reason? who knows..
P.S. On 9/10/01, the gov't claiming that bin Laden was poised to strike within the US by hijacking airplanes and flying them into buildings would have been considered FUD (no?).
Re:TERRORISM IS FUD PERIOD (Score:2)
The only way to coral "free" people into a "monarchial" society, is to use fear.
Oh please... (Score:4, Insightful)
Attacks on SCADA systems?
Who puts their vital power infrastructure controls online anyway?
I cry FUD, and let slip the dogs of mainstream media.
SCADA with backend windows machines (Score:3, Insightful)
it just has to have a corrupted windows box attached to it.
Traffic lights (Score:2, Funny)
I can't wait for it to actually happen.
Re:Traffic lights (Score:2)
Re:Traffic lights (Score:2, Funny)
Drivers in my home town have found a way around that. They tend to ignore traffic laws entirely.
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
Re:Chicken Littles? (Score:5, Insightful)
I saw some testing of systems in '95, I can tell you for a fact that they would have failed in some very spectacular ways.
It's like knowing there is going to be a tidle wave on a specific time. Then building a huge wall to prevent it. Then when the wave comes and the wall prevents people from dying people say "That wasn't so bad, we shouldn't have built the wall"
Re:Chicken Littles? (Score:3, Insightful)
I get sick and tired of the "Y2K was all nonsense" line of argument. I saw plenty of companies that would have been unable to function without their Y2K upgrades.
Sure, the Hollywood spectacular was never on the cards, but we all knew that right?
Y2K was real. It was a problem. We solved it. Well done to all concerned.
Y2K nonsense (Score:2)
Re:Chicken Littles? (Score:2)
Y2K had largely no effect because most code would simply display 00 or 1900 rather than 2000. Odd, yes, life-threatening, no, and if it is, why the fuck didn't they think of that when they were programming their software in the first place?
Re:Chicken Littles? (Score:2)
I'm guessing you haven't been programming for over 30 years.
Re:Chicken Littles? (Score:5, Informative)
I worked on Y2K remediations that impacted everything from payroll to fire alarm systems. Another was responsible for scheduling medical supply deliveries to EMT rigs. I know people who worked on phone systems (911 dialing, anyone?), hospital HVAC, food storage systems, and water treatment facilities.
Why no big problem? Because we all worked our asses off, that's why. Calendar roll-forward trials on paralllel copies of the systems produced everything from total failures of HVAC to people not getting paid and medical shipments dying in the freight schedules. Those things were only avoided because they were fixed. Should the people who originally paid for those systems have not cut the corner, or pressed their original engineers on the issue? Sure. But they didn't. Just like the people that designed much of what's still vulnerable today - only instead of the calendar, it's accidents and malice to fret about.
Re:Chicken Littles? (Score:2)
Wolf, Wolf, not Chicken Little (Score:5, Insightful)
Cindy Sheehan was really effective against Bush for a while because she's a strong family-protection figure who made it clear that Bush had endangered her family rather than protecting it. And Katrina was even more effective, because it demonstrated that Bush wasn't decisive, or strong, or competent, when faced with an actual threat that he couldn't control but could have responded to. Osama bin Laden was just fine - if you're crying Wolf Wolf and a real Wolf shows up on occasion, that demonstrates that your strong leadership is needed just like you said.
Solution (Score:2)
Really... more sabotage than TERROR, isn't it? (Score:5, Insightful)
Most acts that they're looking at would be one time things, and isolated/restricted in nature. (Also making it easy to identify/avoid/fix.) I can't see that something like this would actually cause terror.
Again, CyberSabotage. Nothing more.
Re:Really... more sabotage than TERROR, isn't it? (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
Re:Are you old enought to remember (Score:2)
Centralized tampering is easier to mitigant than decentralized tampering.
And then once Tylenol has a scare... someone would have to find a way to pull the same feat at
Stronger Tylenol - so what (Score:2)
If the terrorist Mohamed Al-blowyouup hacks into the tylenol factory computer and sets the process to add twice as much of the active ingreedient, the workers will begin to notice that they are running out of the stuff faster than before, using more than they should, Al-blowyouup could instead put less in - bad consequences tylenol stops working so well (and workers think hmm tank is still full?).
Al-blowyouup has no choice to add somthing like rat-poison to the mix, at least
It's FUD (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:It's FUD (Score:2)
Making a bomb would have also been a lot easier than hijacking and flying (took a lot of time to learn how to pilot a plane) them into various buildings. Your point being?
Re:It's FUD (Score:2)
My question... (Score:5, Insightful)
From TFA:
"Chatter on Scada attacks is increasing," says Borg, referring to patterns of behaviour that suggest that criminal gangs and militant groups are now fully capable of unleashing such attacks.
Then especially in the case of terrorists, WHY THE HELL HAVEN'T THEY DONE IT YET? If one of them had a shot at bombing the White House tomorrow, do you think he'd say "Eh...no, I'd rather wait until next week and hope they don't improve security by then."
This is not fearmongering for money. This is fearmongering for POWER-and the power they're going to shoot for is the power to control the Internet.
What a hell of an ironic name for that guy, Borg. I think that might tell us about everything we need to know.
Re:My question... (Score:2)
Oh. Wait.
Re:My question... (Score:2)
Aren't the people claiming that this is fear-mongering for nefarious purposes also fear-mongering to a certain extent (*head blows up*)?
Re:My question... (Score:2)
I just had a thought: why is it that comments such as this never come up whenever someone mentions global warming, especially since most (all?) of the solutions offered involve considerably extending the governments influence and control over the economy and private individuals ("This is fear-mongering for POWER-and the power they're going to shoot for is the p
Re:My question... (Score:2)
What your friends in your list are doing is filthy profiteering. This Dept of Homeland Security thing is most definitely terrorism. They are threatening force (by a third party) to coerce both society and government for political reasons.
Fearmongering for an increased budget (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Fearmongering for an increased budget (Score:2)
For more power and tools, not just more budget (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Why the hell... (Score:5, Insightful)
Am I the only one who is thinking? Why the hell are these things connected to the Internet then? And if its an absolute must why not setup the companies using a system like the US Governments's SIPRNet [wikipedia.org]
Re:Why the hell... (Score:2)
I'll play devil's advocate here...
At a company that a relative worked for (in a co-op term), she informed me of a security breach that was going on. A "secure" computer had a modem installed. Since this was a security risk, the modem was removed since secure computers are not supposed to be attached to an "insecure" network.
Within 24 hours, another modem found it's way into the computer. (Remember - this is
on to something here? (Score:5, Funny)
Scott Borg? (Score:2, Insightful)
As far as fear mongering, you don't get a $93 million dollar budget for simply recommending that companies follow well established security procedures, including vigilance against social engineering.
Former public servant's opinion (Score:2, Interesting)
LIES - A New Set of Lies to Reap Citizen's Freedom (Score:2, Flamebait)
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 .
Re:Terror Via Highway Conditions Sign... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Terror Via Highway Conditions Sign... (Score:5, Funny)
I would have expected the nuke attack to start in about 30 to 45 min instead.
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.
Re:Confusing (Score:2)
Ask any administrator who's had to deal with spamware showing up inside their company's network from some VP's traveling laptop, which they refuse to update lest it break or u
Re:Confusing (Score:2)
Re:Confusing (Score:2)
Letting manufacturers or industry people
End of internet (and world) predicted. Film at 11 (Score:5, Insightful)
And, if they were to do so, what happens? Someone announces a recall and a bunch of people take their cars to the dealerships.
Hell, why not do it the cheap way: wait until there is an accident, and just announce that it was done by your super secret ninja terror 31ee7 hax0rs.
Or consider the sources: this guy from the "U.S. Cyber Consequences Unit" --- with their empty website [usccu.us] on a non-government '.us' domain.
Remember, kids, only a few years ago, the world didn't need computers to run. Chemical plants and other control systems have failsafes and safety valves and emergency shutdowns; people survive power blackouts, even if the birth rate does go up; we still have analog radios and mechanical water valves.
On the other hand --- here's some guy with a nifty-sounding name on a web-site, and Richard Clarke, who has been making a living from running around with his hair on fire ever since he said cyber-terror was a bigger threat than al Qaeda. Get a little attention, and people will start taking their calls again; maybe the USCCA" can even hire someone to make a web site.
Who benefits from this story?
Re:End of internet (and world) predicted. Film at (Score:2)
Easy.. Said terrorist creates fake web page claiming dousing your car's interior with gasol
Re:End of internet (and world) predicted. Film at (Score:3)
Those people who believe things in spam and act on it, all being consumed in flaming conflagrations... is bad. Right?
Re:End of internet (and world) predicted. Film at (Score:2)
Well, someone certainly messed up his prescription (Score:3, Insightful)
There are serious cyber threats, though, denial-of-service attacks, attacks on online trading systems,... But that was probably not as dramatic as exploding cars.
As Predicted by Bruce Schneier's contest... (Score:2)
great... (Score:5, Funny)
Let's assume he's making any sense. (Score:2)
Why are these things possible?
You'd think, if you have a major security flaw like the ones listed, you would fix it. Who actually puts the controls for their manufacturing process on the internet? No, I'm serious, who does this, and why do we let them get away with it? Screw making kinks in the industrial formation process, if I can get that kind of access over the internet, I'm going to take control of those freakin' huge f
HCF (Score:2, Funny)
boxcutters people (Score:3, Insightful)
so let's loose the technophilia when addressing terrorism
it's the low tech/ no tech exploits that should be our focus
Please Don't Tell Congress..... (Score:2)
Governments more paranoid than citizens. (Score:2)
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
Homeland Security Knows Nothing (Score:3, Insightful)
I attended a cyber security thing once put on by these guys. It was completely worthless. When I say completely worthless I'm talking screendoor on a submarine worthless.
A scenario: "Half of your computers on the network are infected by a virus, it is tying up your internet bandwidth trying to spread itself, what do you do? what...do...you...do?"
Ok, for 1 if you're worth a damn you don't open port 25 outbound to client PCs anyway and proxy most internet traffic. The only outbound ports are for legacy systems with dedicated IPs. Second, say you do notice your bandwidth is consumed by something. Sniff the port, and close the firewall rule for said traffic until you have the info to take further action. Implicit deny anyone?
Their scenario was geared toward the morons of the IT industry who might truly be perplexed by such a situation, but I found it laughable.
That wasn't the totally useless part. The exercise as it was to be performed: IT provides the info on systems we are running and possible vulnerabilities. They come up with semi-plausable scenarios to exploit them. But in this event the EOC is fake-active and public safety officials are in a paper simulation of cyber attacks going on in their network. Notably, the analog radio system at the core is not mentioned.
For every problem the solution would be to call IT. IT isn't even part of the exercise. Our fire chief who knows fire and fire personnel management inside and out, doesn't know the difference between PCL6 and PostScript. Nor would anyone in their right mind ask him to write an ACL for cisco equipment much less give him enable priviledges. Not that he would ask for them, he knows better. He knows that if you have a leaky pipe you call a plumber, not an ambulance.
So the point of the whole exercise it to blow taxpayer money, ensure that public safety knows the numbers of appropriate IT personnel, possibly expose idiotic IT practices, and give public safety guys a little more FUD stress they could do without.
Have they even simulated what would happen if a local ISP had a truck full of manure driven into it. That could easily take out half a city's internet and probably a few people downstream in a single point of failure. Would it effect first responders? Not at all. They have radios.
I can't imagine many scenarios where cyber terrorism would be life threatening. Possibly have an economic impact, but I bet it would pale in comparison to phishing scams which they can't even police now.
It's an election year (Score:3, Insightful)
Time to terrorize the public again.
Re:Very Real Indeed! (Score:2)
It's also not entirely true. Most computers, especially large, important servers, have several layers of shielding to prevent just such an occurence. Your home pc and the workstations at your office might short out, but most of the major servers that run the internet and businesses would barely hiccup.
In many cases, the same sort of protections exist for real cybert
Re:Very Real Indeed! (Score:3, Funny)
Not if we had any balls and did the logical steps required to erradicate it.
See much terrorism in China? Why is that do you suppose?
Re:Very Real Indeed! (Score:2)
Where do Americans come by this attitude that war, surveillance, executions, and secret prisons is somehow brave? If you are brave -- that is, NOT AFRAID -- terrorism simply doesn't exist, because you can't be terr
Re:Very Real Indeed! (Score:5, Insightful)
Instead they have what they consider a growing problem with domestic terrorists. That's right, their own citizens taking terrorist actions against their government. Except we in America don't consider it terrorism because we don't like the Communist totalitarian rulers of China. So you tell me which is preferable, being hated by extremist members of other countries, or being hated by the general population of your own country. Take your time, I'll wait.
Re:Very Real Indeed! (Score:2)
BULLSHIT. Backbone internet data centers are not EMP shielded. My cell phone works just fine in several major Northern Virginia data centers. If a cell phone works, there is no EMP shielding. There also is no EMP shielding in virtual
Re:Very Real Indeed! (Score:2)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faraday_Cage [wikipedia.org]
Re:pure fearmongering (Score:2, Informative)
people into electing and re-electing them.
Or at least close enough to electing them that they can make up the difference.
KFG
Re:How likely was 9/11 until it happened (Score:2)
Mostly I do agree with what you are saying, but this remark is a bit hard to swallow. Personally I have been through fire on two different occations. Nothing big, but minor enough to have lost my apartment over if it got any bigger. Also I don't know that many people who didn't have at least one incident in their life time that smoke alarm did warn them of possible fi
Re:How likely was 9/11 until it happened (Score:5, Insightful)
After reading your comment I found that I totally agree with you. He's not fearmongering but the article sure is!
I didn't see a single quote in that article with reference to terrorism. The quotes from those interviewed refered to criminal activities, but the terms "terrorism" and "cyber-terrorism" were thrown in by the jornalist. Why? Does it matter if they're "terrorists" or not? I couldn't care less - the potential consequences are what matters.
The only reason why the reporter uses the word "Terrorist" is because it gets far more attention than the pre 9/11 "Hacker".