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Re: 10 easy steps to writing the scariest cyberwarfare article ever
From: David Farber <dave () farber net>
Date: Wed, 15 Apr 2009 07:01:57 -0400
Begin forwarded message: From: Gene Spafford <spaf () cerias purdue edu> Date: April 14, 2009 11:21:17 PM EDT To: dave () farber net Cc: "ip" <ip () v2 listbox com>Subject: Re: [IP] Re: 10 easy steps to writing the scariest cyberwarfare article ever
Let me also note that there are those with either political interests (e.g., Russia, China) or economic interests (e.g., some vendors of traditional anti-virus and firewalls) who would benefit from either ridiculing any stories of real problems or seeking to quash attempts to change "business as usual" cybersecurity approaches. The usual methods work here -- select the comments that are the most difficult to verify and naysay them. Aggregate a group of statements and statistics that weren't presented together so that the total sounds specious. And, of course, prey on the skepticism that has been strongly reinforced over the last decade by the excesses of fear- mongering and secrecy by government officials.
Are there major problems? Certainly, and we have lots of documentation that the problems are real and growing. But is the sky falling? Probably not, but for a variety of reasons, most of us don't have access to all the data, so we don't know how bad things might really be.
Thus, I agree that we should be skeptical of accounts that present stories of pending disaster. But we should also keep in mind that there are problems, those problems may well be worse than what we believe them to be rather than less severe, that there are those who would like us to minimize our response to those problems, and the risks posed by doing too little are significant.
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Current thread:
- 10 easy steps to writing the scariest cyberwarfare article ever David Farber (Apr 14)
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- Re: 10 easy steps to writing the scariest cyberwarfare article ever David Farber (Apr 14)
- Re: 10 easy steps to writing the scariest cyberwarfare article ever David Farber (Apr 15)
- Re: 10 easy steps to writing the scariest cyberwarfare article ever David Farber (Apr 15)