Cybergeddon 0

Cyber Hysteria is more like it.

A simple distributed denial of service (DDOS) attack does not the end of the world make. As I commented elsewhere yesterday, it’s pretty much an electronic version of what happens to the Jersey Turnpike on Memorial Day weekend: more traffic shows up than the road can handle.

No one is screaming that the NJT is suffering a traffic attack and that

The! World! Is! Coming! To! An! End!

unless large numbers of computer security consultants get fat contracts to tell persons to use firewalls and keep their operating systems’ patches up-to-date.

DickDestiny lays out the scenario:

North Korea: We’ll make a handful of your websites load slow!

South Korea: Just wait! Once we get our electromagnetic pulse bomb to work at a range of greater than ten yards …

North Korea: Your EMP-bomb building scientists have nothing on our selfless warriors. They can can modify a five-year-old computer virus as well as Internet script kiddies or maybe even a little better! Tomorrow we strike your Imperialist puppet-master pigdogs at dol.gov as another example that you are powerless! Powerless!

South Korea: Our electromagnetic pulse (EMP) bombs, if exploded, will jam and damage your defence systems! Then you will not be able to rewrite more computer viruses!

North Korea: Tomorrow we will inflict more merciless retribution and pounding on your decadent overlords as well as make the website of your evil Ministry of Agriculture to load slow, if maybe at all. At least five people will be made to work overtime!

Honestly, this cyberwar stuff is FUD to the nth power logarithmically compounded. Before losing their heads over it in public, persons should research how networks work.

Some folks will point to the recent unpleasantness between Russia and Georgia, where a DDOS thought to have originated in Russia overwhelmed the Georgian government’s servers. But the plain fact is that had nothing to do with why Russia defeated Georgia in the field.

Russia defeated Georgia in the field because Russia had overwhelming military superiority, not because they had overwhelming pinging superiority.

Read Dick Destiny and Vmyths to protect against the hysteria.

And, please, make it go away so we can worry about real stuff.