Re: CIA Director Leon Panetta Warns of Possible Cyber-Pearl Harbor

2011-02-15 06:44

Forwarded from: Richard Forno First off: this is the same Leon Panetta who told a Congressional committee last week that his official estimate that Mubarak would step down on DayX was based on "media reports." (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/02/10/AR2011021007642.html). If that's how they're dealing with real-world concerns, I'm not sure we want to know who's providing their "cyber" intellgence, do we? Secondly, as William's comment rightly notes, pretty much all the "gloom and doom" stuff cited in the article/hearing (and others like it) is nothing that we in the industry, academia, or research communities haven't been talking/writing/teaching/briefing about for at least 15 years. And yet these people in Washington are still acting as though this is "new" problem we're facing and scrambling (er, "flailing") around trying to deal with stuff they've been warned about for ages but never paid much attention to --- and now, I daresay it's too late to really, truly, fundamentally fix them. They just don't get it. And for all their fear-mongering and hyperboble, a "Digital Whatever" scenario won't make them get it, either. The fact that the clowns in Washington officially still use the term "Pearl Harbor" in the context of a cyber event is evidence of that. They just don't get it. Which begs the question: if after all this time, the national policy makers have demonstrated they don't really understand or care about *really* fixing cybersecurity, why should those of us in the operational world care, either? (Profitable careers/products/services aside, that is.) -- rick On Feb 14, 2011, at 04:24 , InfoSec News wrote:

News URL

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/02/10/AR2011021007642.html

#CIA