Cyberterrorism Article in Jane's is Available

James McP writes "Guess what gang, we're published! The cyberterrorism article we all helped with a while back is now available at Jane's Intelligence Review. It's targeted for PC laymen but still does a decent job of getting the idea across. To be honest, it sounds like a Slashdot article. :)" If you are quoted, please e-mail me to arrange payment as promised here. It'll only be a token thing, I'm sure, but it's still kind of cool.

Comments

NOTE: Plagiarism from Janes.

[crowland]

Not to start accusing Jane's, but they clearly plagiarized my post to Slashdot and did not provide credit. Here is a snippet of the Jane's article:

As pointed out by Clifford Stoll in The Cuckoo's Egg, automated 'data mining' techniques can be used to search for useful patterns in vast stores of insecure and seemingly unrelated data. A bank may assume its electronic fund transfer system is the most vital system to protect, but a terrorist may only want access to the financial records of persons or groups that are the bank's customers. This may not even involve destruction of data, as the pure information is often much more valuable than simply destroying random records. Reconnaissance attacks such as these are difficult to stop but extremely damaging. In the long-term banking scenario, the terrorist may simply choose to track sources of funding based on deposit records to harm the person or group who is the target. In a situation like this, going into the bank to destroy the information is only a temporary setback and will raise attention. Why destroy a valuable point of information gathering by doing something short-term like disrupting operations?

Here is a quote from the original thread with my (long) post:

"For instance, a bank may assume their electronic funds transfer system is the most vital system to protect, but a terrorist may only want access to the financial records of persons or groups that are the bank's customers. This may not even involve destruction of data (which is what most people think is the end goal but isn't always), rather the pure information which is often much more valuable than simply destroying random records. Reconnaissance attacks like these are difficult to stop but extremely damaging. In the case of the bank, the terrorist may simply choose to track sources of funding based on deposit records to harm the person or group who is the target. In a situation like this, going into the bank to destroy the information is only a temporary setback and will raise attention. Why completely destroy a valuable point of information gathering by doing something silly like disrupting operations? It's rare that a single offensive has any lasting effect, you must attack from different levels and leverage all available resources for maximum impact. Only dispose of resources that you need to. "

I assume it is a case of inappropriate referencing. However, they didn't even bother to put quotes around the paragraph indicating it as a direct quote. Instead they just did a cut and paste. I don't want to be rude, but this is not very professional. I can only hope it was a mistake on the author's part. I would hope they would at least offer a retraction/correction for this.

Nice article

[jd]

No matter what anyone else's critism may be, there is no question in my mind that the new article is both more accurate and more relevent to it's subject than the original.

Secondly, again, no matter what anyone else's critisism may be, I felt that the article gave a good, solid introduction to the CONCEPTS involved. The "facts" used are not, IMHO, all that important, as it's not aimed at security specialists, but people outside the field.

Lastly, I felt that it was a great first step, in the CO-OPERATION between journals and specialists, in which neither was trying to feed off the other, but rather co-exist in a mutually supportive way.

Personally, I'd say ignore any glitches and look at what's been gained, by all sides.

You're all nitpicking :-)

[Gerv]

Come on, guys - compared to the amount of rubbish that's written on this subject by mainstream journalists, this is pretty good. OK, so if you can't find any really major problems with it, you can always look closer to find smaller and smaller ones, but I think they deserve congratulating on producing what seems to be a pretty good summary of the current situation.

When it comes down to it, small things like the fact that Wargames wasn't, in fact, based on what Kevin Mitnick did is not important. The important thing is that they seem to have got most of their facts right.

I would say Slashdot's input has managed to create the most sensible and accurate piece of journalism on crackers and their activities written by a mainstream journalist that I have ever read.

Gerv