I panicked over reports that terrorists
were going to nuke the Internet and
all I got was this lousy defacement.

See:   The Kaspersky site, employer of Aleksander Gostev, instigator of this panic attack
See also:   MosNews' ridiculously fact-free news report   (dated 2004-08-24)
See also:   Talking Points for the Media   (comments from real security folks)


THE FUD & HYPE REALITY CHECK
Headlines generated over the claims of an imminent "Cyber-Terrorism" threat.
(circa August 24th, 2004)


Reading the news of late is like witnessing all security issues being reduced to a "Rocking Chair" modality. Everyone's put a helluva lot of energy and effort into this mess, but we are still going nowhere fast!
Talking Points for the Media (drafted by several well-known and published security professionals)
August 25th, 2004

  • No other security site has issued an alert on this matter; that alone shows how baseless this "threat" truly is.

  • Massive attacks on the Internet are like conspiracy theories: those that are predicted don't occur and those that occur were never predicted.  After all, no-one ever foresaw the 2003 incident in which 6 of the 13 root servers were DoS'd.

  • Should we be concerned about security at this time?   Of course! But no more so than any other day.  Scrambling to patch systems in advance of a "threat" such as this is foolhardy and not the way to enact meaningful security.

0WN3D BY FUDM0NG3RZ, B4BY!@#$%^
GR33TZ TO: TR34CH3RY UNL1M1T3D, R3ZN0R::D0T::C0M, 4TTR1T10N,
VMYTHS, 1NF0W4RR10R, UN1XG33KZ, 4ND 0UR H0M13Z 4T N0V05T1!@#

[Okay, joke's over...]