Is Cyber-Crime A Virtual Threat?
from the Living-On-The-Grid dept
The definition of cyber-crime seems to be crime with an "extra scary factor" due to the mysterious "cyber" prefix. Identity theft and computer viruses are always being raised as examples of the "tip of the iceberg of cyber-terrorism". But security experts even admit that there have been no real examples of cyber-terrorism. The East Coast blackout was not caused by a computer worm, but the possibility of a computer glitch causing threats to the real world brings up real concern. So while this article provides multiple examples of the possibilities of cyber-crime, no suggestions for preventing it are given. And that's just scaring people for fun. (They might as well propose a color-coded public service announcement for computer virus threats.) Instead, we should be focusing on what can be done -- like being aware of the phishing scams and not being duped into giving away passwords for chocolate. And perhaps when major websites get knocked out due to single failure points, we should take that as a lesson to make our networks more robust. So it's good that we're thinking about cyber-threats, but the prevention of them requires a bit of long-range planning, not scary tales of the possibilities.
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