02.16.13
Cans and cans of shoeshine
The cyberwar shoeshine crowd takes holidays. But when not on holiday it fabricates and dissembles almost non-stop, often in the most absurd ways.
From the well-known publication, on every newsstand you know, Infosecurity magazine:
A national survey of Americans shows that a majority fear that cyber warfare is imminent and that the country will attack or be attacked in the next decade. In addition, Americans believe both the government and private sector networks are ill-prepared for a surge in cyber conflict.
A poll by Tenable Network Security, which works with the US Department of Defense and military and government clients globally, found that the increasingly strong rhetoric about a “cyber Pearl Harbor??? and cyber attacks being the modern-day equivalent of nuclear weapons is apparently having an effect on the nation’s psyche.
Modern day equivalent of nuclear weapons.
Now you know why I find a lot of people who work in the national computer security machine contemptible.
Anyway, a poll conducted by a cyberwar defense firm, Tenable, whose business is contracts on the taxpayer dime, just happens to find that a majority of Americans believe cyberwar is imminent. I bet you’d have a hard time making that one stick in a random sampling at any burger joint in Pasadena.
This is how it works. Guys who worked at the National Security Agency, whose leader is famous for claims that cyberwar is causing the greatest transfer of wealth in history, disappearing the future of all Americans, leave and go into business selling the same warped story.
All in the effort to grease expanding budgets on cyberwar defense from which they will personally profit.
The shoeshine boys of cyberwar have done this kind of thing for a decade and a half, at least. I just didn’t have an insulting enough name for them previously.
[iDefense went bankrupt and ceased operation a few years ago. Its CEO’s bizarre proclamations, however, deserve preservation.]
James Adams was highly quotable on what would happen in cyberwar. No one in the mainstream press cast even the slightest fishy eye at his claims, most of which were laughably absurd.
Here then, is a small sampling of James Adams …
Pentagon hackers employed in Eligible Receiver “did more than the massed might of Saddam Hussein’s armies, than the Nazis in the Second World War.” From Techweek, 1999.
“iDefense is way ahead of the competition.” From Washington Technology, “the business newspaper for government systems integrators,” November 1999.
“Which brings us to the final rung on the escalatory ladder: the virtual equivalent of nuclear deployment. I offer as illustration Eligible Receiver.” From a speech, “The Future of War, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, June 2000.
‘Nuff said.
The shoeshine boys of cyberwar — from the archives.