Kevin Poulsen Slams Media Cyberterror Coverage

Kevin Poulsen has an interesting counterpart25 writes "little ditty in ZDNet's Commentary section about Chicken Little media folks preaching some sort of approaching cyberterrorism debacle. I thought this was particularly interesting in light of the recent Jane's article flap." Meanwhile, a BBC story submitted byThe Big D tells how the "Islamic group of Hackers (Al-Sooraj wing)" participated in the recent Pakistani military coup.

Uhm...

[dougman]

Not to be a negative nancy this early in the morning (EST for me) but of all the journalists who have covered "Computer Security" Mr. Poulsen is one of the last ones I'm going to have interest in. Please recall the obnoxious pile-on, pretentious, self-serving "journalism" served up by this gentleman , not to mention his history of trying to be part of the news, not just a reporter of it.

Ok, I'm being really unfair / vicious. Time for some caffeine.

Modifying code

[Kinthelt]

Nobody's trying to introduce backdoors into code while fixing Y2K issues. What they're really doing is making sure they still have jobs in 20 years by allowing dates to only go as high as 2019.

From the BBC Story..

[Awel]

However, webpages dedicated to Pakistan's political parties have been left untouched.


In other words, only the governmental webpages have been touched. Now, the government has just been taken over by the army whose exploits are so gloriously lauded in the new-look webpages. Am I the only one who thinks that it`s far more likely that the army got hold of the host box as part of the takeover, and that it wasn`t cracked at all?

Re:Why should we be spared..

[ender-]

...but it seems that job of the media is to generate buzz...sell things..make a name for yourself..etc

Gee, and I thought that once upon a time, the job of the media was to inform the public...silly me.

Ender

Why should we be spared..

[Zoltar]

I don't know why anyone thinks the computer industry should be spared from any sort of media hype. Maybe I'm cynical, but it seems that job of the media is to generate buzz...sell things..make a name for yourself..etc... why let simple facts get in the way. Anyways... I think the whole cyber-terrorism thing is pretty interesting, but hardly new. One of my favorite books is the Cuckoo's Egg by Clif Stoll. It's a bit dated now, but still an interesting read.

Maybe a little paranoia is good when it comes to this arena. While we strive to make computers easy for the "common man" we are also making it easy for the "common criminal."

Important Point

[Raven667]

I don't know anything about this particular journalist. I don't read ZDnet publications because they usually suck ass. But we should praise them when they do get something right for a change. Maybe it will incite them to perform more random acts of correctness, fancy that!

Re:Uhm...

[Knight]

Well, I respect your right to read whatever you want, but this guy has been part of the scene for almost 20 years. Maybe you should read his story, it's actually quite interesting. He hasn't been part of the news since he was arrested in the 80s.

If you need to point-and-click to administer a machine,

Apology (somewhat) and clarification..

[dougman]

Let me step back just a bit and acknowledge that maybe I skewered Poulsen just a bit too much.

I have read his stuff and I am quite familiar with his story. I guess I just find it a bit annoying that he feels the need to weave in anecdotes about his "big bad hacker days" into every story he writes, regardless of whether there is one shred of direct relevance to the actual story itself.
"You don't need to keep reminding us how cool and elite you feel you once were, Kevin!", that's all I'm saying.

Feeling better now,