Schmidt Predicts Digital Sky Is Falling

Danse writes "Former Microsoft security chief Howard Schmidt now works for the government as the vice chairman of the Critical Infrastructure Protection Board. According to this article on Security Focus, he has been touring the country, proclaiming the dangers of "zero-day viruses" and "affinity worms" that will create the kind of havoc that nothing else short of a nuclear exchange could cause. "Traffic lights, pacemakers, appliances -- all subject to outages and interruptions because in the future they're controlled via Internet, declares Schmidt. The power grid could fail catastrophically by 2005!" How do you argue with this kind of rhetoric, especially when it's being spread directly by government officials to corporate leaders?"

Comments

How do you fight the rhetoric?

[nadador]

The truth helps. Just keep speaking the truth, and tell your friends, people on the bus, folks at work.

There are a couple of important points to consider.

* Systems related to national security shouldn't be on the internet in the first place. Sure, that's what its was designed for, to be a comm network that would survive a nuclear strike and still route packets. Of course, plenty of government networks are already physically disconnected. Not firewalled, just not connected. So no Slashdot reading on your power grid terminal. Until we actually start building secure software, cause we don't now, some systems absolutely have to stay disconnected, or connected only through separate, encrypted, physically secure networks.

* Instead of feeping creaturism, maybe its time to actually start worrying about security, ala OpenBSD. Could it be that people would put up with substandard office software and not-so-intuitive file browsers if we guarenteed them that the financial data on their computers would be safe? Would you pay extra for your internet-connected pacemaker (which will probably send data to your doctor) if you knew that somebody couldn't hack it and turn it off? Would your Mom put up with having to learn a confusing operating system if it meant that her Quicken data wouldn't get stolen? I bet mine would.

* And maybe, just maybe, we, as software engineers should stop living up to the low expectations of the marketdroids and the PHBs (oooh look, shiny GUI) and start demanding more of ourselves. The reason that propoganda like this punk is spewing travels so fast is that the computer-using public has been conditioned to expect so little (Oh, another reboot? No big deal. Server's down? Eh, kick it, I'll go get a cup of coffee.)

So, I'd tell people to stop whining, stop freaking out, and stop bowing to the government-media complex's instinct to make everything a damn crisis. Instead of worrying, do something. If you're a software dude, start thinking about robustness and security instead of pretty. If you're a (l)user, start learning how to secure your stuff, and start demanding that they companies you buy from do the same.