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The comments of "It's hard to be really secure, so don't make people mad" are very short-sighted. As society becomes increasingly reliant upon network infrastr
by kbutler 16y ago
The comments of "It's hard to be really secure, so don't make people mad" are very short-sighted.
As society becomes increasingly reliant upon network infrastructure, those who oppose society will increasingly target that infrastructure.
When terrorists can cause billions of dollars of losses by hacking the airlines, why bother trying to smuggle weapons on planes?
When opposing nations can cripple military and economic infrastructure through computers, why bother developing nuclear weapons?
We are rapidly entering a world where our computing infrastructure is both our most critical and our most vulnerable asset.
"Speak softly" is completely insufficient without the "carry a big stick" part.
kb
- PakG1 16y agoEven so, I'd say bombs on a plane still would incite a type of fear that's impossible to instill through cracking secure networks. Of course, lives could be endangered by cracking network infrastructure, especially as we become more reliant on it, but I'd argue that the average person is disconnected enough from the concept to not be emotionally affected or angered by it. At least until there's a really big incident on the level of Chernobyl that causes people to irrationally distrust networks no matter how good network security gets, similar to how some people irrationally distrust nuclear power plants today, no matter how safe they may have become.
- loewenskind 16y agoYou think a bomb blowing up a plane is more scary than a plane just randomly deciding to fly into something? I don't. Plane control hacking is vastly more scary than bombs because one break means someone on the other side of the earth can do what ever he/she wants with all of them at the same time.
- PakG1 16y agoI didn't say that. I said the average person would be too disconnected from the topic to to fear it, most likely because they wouldn't be able to intellectually consider it. I did say that it would take a Chernobyl-level incident to wake people up, and if we ever get that, it would cause things to swing to the opposite side from indifference to paranoia (if it were to happen).
- loewenskind 16y agoOne plane getting hacked and crashing into something will be enough to create a wave of panic like never seen before. Look what a few planes hitting a few buildings did when you could see the perpetrators. Now imagine what happens when you can't.