It’s nice to see that organisations with a useful, legitimate role to play in the business world aren’t resorting to post-September 11 doom-mongering tactics.
The Business Software Alliance has released a ‘report’ indicating that terrorists are poised to unleash digital hell on the world, with the Washington Post and CNN quick to trumpet this news. Of course, there’s no actual evidence to suggest this is imminent, just speculation from unnamed IT professionals.
The BSA make the leap from (a) surveying the opinions of these professionals on the likelihood of future ‘cyber attacks’ to (b) quotes such as “Today’s news reports that Al-Qaeda may be planning attacks against major parts of our country’s information infrastructure is sobering” [Robert Holleyman, CEO of the BSA]. Excuse me? I think I may have missed some logical leaps there.
I really don’t know why the BSA have released this. The Register cynically suggests a pro-Microsoft conspiracy; I wouldn’t be surprised if it was just a horrendously tasteless marketing exercise to raise the BSA’s profile. Whatever, I’m just pissed off that at a time when people are already nervous, and when vigilance is being pushed by every government agency, some publicity-happy organisation decides to spin a legitimate survey into this kind of display.
Typical Register with yet another version of the creaky old Microsoft conspiracy theory.
Ah, they’re just telling you that Al-Qaeda are going to hack you into a thousand and one little 404 pages! They want you to be afraid. Microsoft want you to be afraid so that they can… sell you something!
That was funny. I broke out laughing at this one :D. . . . less geeky. lol.
On a serious note(heh, geeky), some very bad stuff can be done with a computer. However, when these companies try to label hackers as “terrorists” it is a tough sell to the public since the hackers aren’t killing people in indiscriminate, brutal and bloodly ways (a common trademark of terrorism).
So, it is very hard to take ''hacking" as anything else then cyber vandelism. Which IMHO it is.
Yes, but what if Al Qaeda get their hands on the same tehcnology as the paedophiles reported on in Brass Eye by Chris Morris? Then they’ll surely be able to release killer gases from afar through “special keyboards”, and touch our youngsters by wearing “special gloves”…
Mohammed, Rajik and I have created a new terror device! It is the Al-smallulator! With it we will beam ourselves into phone lines and emerge through the speakers of decadent MP3 traders and detonate our bombs for the glory of Allah!