Apparently terrorism has turned hi-tech. Well, if the idea of having your website jacked and used to spout volatile religious propaganda is the sort of thing that keeps you up at night. Given that the prospect terrifies me, I feel the act can legitimately be described as cyber-terrorism. Nearly 1000 Danish sites have allegedly been hacked in such a manner, in retaliation for having the audacity to discuss the contentious cartoons. Zone-H described it as the fastest politically targetted series of defacements they have seen, perpetrated by both individuals and organised groups. Perhaps P-2006 is next in line. Or perhaps Allah will be offering you V1aGr4 right here. We’re quietly confident that as an omnipotent being He has better things to do than worry about than a few mediocre sketches, and cares even less about our opinion.
Having found devious ways to cram data into the tiniest nooks and even, rumour has it, the very crannies of this laptop’s meagre 60GB harddisk, I finally caved in this evening and purchased an external one. My new acquisition is an Iomega Silver Series 300GB drive for a little over a hundred quid at Amazon. It should be arriving in a few days after which — particularly if the name Syndrome means anything to you — you should find much more available. By which I mean it’ll store a good few law essays.
During my hunt I also came across an offer potent enough to excite gadget lovers of even Ravi proportions. Being a magnanimous sort of chap, I decided to share: In return for nothing more than an email address, you can pick up a £5 Firebox voucher to spend on anything your technophilic heart desires. Speaking of hearts I believe it was intended to be some sort of Valentine’s offer, so hurry to claim yours as it’s then valid for a month. Get them while they’re hot or, given the location, on fire (in the cool sense, not the Danish embassy sense). What did I deign to procure? All I’ll say is this: you can rub it and it’s not Aladdin’s lamp.
And finally, if you’ve been wondering, what the practical results of Google’s self-censorship in China are, here is a stark example: google.com | google.cn.
9 February 2006 at 9:09 am
“you can rub it and it’s not Aladdin’s lamp” – wonder what that is… o:-)
9 February 2006 at 4:39 pm
That’s not very helpful. You can rub practically anthing you can touch. Maybe not a man-eating tiger, or evil hairy caterpillars, or HCl, but still….
Is it a furry toy? Or a dog?
10 February 2006 at 10:14 pm
I know the two of you are obviously very different people, but your writing style as of late reminds me more and more of Tycho’s style. (you know who I mean.)
And I think that’s pretty cool. You both make me laugh. Good stuff, dude.
10 February 2006 at 10:48 pm
You’re quite right. I’d be lying if I said he hadn’t influence my blogging style at all — the precision power of his italics if nothing else!
14 February 2006 at 2:14 am
Social and political rivalry spilling out into computer based vigilante warfare is a somewhat old phenomenon. Back in the good old days Chinese and American virus writers would compete, writing viruses that removed the other nationality’s infections, before infecting with their own.
The litany of technical vulnerabilities that pervade the management of websites and their associated systems (e.g. DNS servers) makes it all too easy for these people. What would really be scarey is if they actually turned from Cyber-vandalism to cyber-terrorism.
If you want to damage your ability to sleep at night then I would recomend reading some of the discussion papers published by NATO considering their retailatory actions against organisations and states using information warfare. They include cheerful comments along the lines of ‘as the attack widens to essential services and the emergency services find themselves unable to act the fabric of society will begin to collapse’ (quoted off the top of my head from something I read 2 years ago, so probably not exact).
But thankfully they have so far restricted their activities to the terrorist equivalent of throwing eggs at members of parliament. May it stay that way…
14 February 2006 at 2:23 am
Hmm… Much too early in the morning to appreciate irony… :(|)
But never to early to appreciate this particular smiley ~o)
14 February 2006 at 12:03 pm
You are quite right. The facetious comments on cyber-terrorism were intended to convey the fact that this was nothing more than vandalism.
I hadn’t heard about virus writers neutralising one another’s threats in national rivalry, that’s interesting.
As for e-terrorism, with increasing computerisation, soon seemingly insignificant acts may deserve that label. For example, imagining switching all the computer-controlled traffic lights in a city to green for a moment. It sounds like a poorly conceived prank and yet the consequences would be distrous, not only causing casualties from the road accidents, but also preventing emergency services from reaching the scene by blocking the transport infrastructure. Like you, I fear it’s not far off.