The Weekly Round-Up: 12.11.04

"We have entered an era of sustained digital attacks from radicals, criminals and zealots, who will be difficult to contain and to deal with..."

Hell's-a-poppin' - it's the end of the world.

"The present threat level of a terrorist digital attack that causes severe loss of life is low to medium but likely to rise to medium and then to high in the coming three-to-five year horizon."

Cripes!

Sound scary? Sound made up? Who knows (the Round-Up could probably guess) but a number of security experts have hit out this week at the company who put out a press release, containing those lines, which also claimed "the sophistication of would-be cyber terrorism groups has been rising significantly since 2002" and talked of "daily digital attacks" which "spark fear and cause damage to life".

Heaven forbid anybody should spark fear - least of all by mentioning terrorists who, right now, are conducting "detailed digital surveillance and reconnaissance of economic targets".

"Where is the evidence for this startling assertion?" asked one outraged anti-virus expert, clearly concerned for the reputation of his industry.

Well, it's... erm... "rogue, politically motivated, electronic attacks from espionage, radical and criminal groups," added the press release, from a company the Round-Up long ago swore to never give the oxygen of publicity by naming, though at no point does it detail the research behind the claims or provide any supplementary evidence to support such claims.

Simon Perry, VP security strategy at CA, said: "There has not been a single incident of cyber terrorism and there has not even been a single incident to suggest terrorist groups are developing the skills and the systems to commit such crimes."

And while doubtful that such attacks will emerge as a real threat, Perry added: "If you have in place security to protect you from hackers, virus writers, script kiddies and the very real threats which exist you will, by default, be protected from any attack which might come from a terrorist group. There's nothing to suggest it would be a different kind of attack."

The Round-Up can't help thinking Perry's first point pulls the rug from under the assertion that "the present threat level of a terrorist digital attack that causes severe loss of life is low to medium".

"Low to medium?" asked another AV expert quizzically. "It is emphatically zero and almost certain to remain that way."

So there you go. Believe who you want but bear this final word of warning in mind: "The rollout of 'always on' broadband tilts the balance further against the innocent citizens."

So, you see, all those people in Chipping Sodbury who campaigned long and hard for broadband access and the unbundling of their local telephone exchange have practically invited Osama bin Laden into their home.

And the effect of this all this scaremongering? Well according to research from the CBI out this week the vast majority of businesses are now spending more on security due to fears over cyber-terrorism.

Which sounds alarming - until you realise it could all be a ruse. Perhaps these businesses aren't as green as they seem.

Digby Jones, director general of the CBI (not to be confused with Digby 'the biggest dog in the world'), said: "Business understands the meaning of risk and is working hard to calibrate the additional risks posed by security."

But perhaps businesses understand even more than we are crediting them with. Could IT managers really be exploiting these fears for their own ends?

Such alarmist claims often make compelling copy for the mainstream media - as the Round-Up pointed out two weeks ago - and therefore they reach the consciousness of less clued-up non-technical types... or the financial directors who sign off massive IT budgets.

While previous requests for increased IT budget have fallen on deaf ears, there is a suggestion that this more emotive issue is freeing up sums of money previously only dreamt about.

"Can I have more money for IT?" "Why?" "To protect us from terrorists."

It's a cheap shot but the need to protect paranoid financial directors from 'cyber-terrorists' strikes far more of a chord with paranoid financial directors than admitting to the need to provide more effective IT infrastructure to the business - even if the two phrases essentially cover the same upgrades and improvements.

Speaking of scaremongering and hype, the Round-Up's favourite tabloid group, Associated Newspapers, publisher of The Daily Mail, has announced it is buying Find a Property - a popular website which enables homebuyers to narrow their search and find homes within their price range and in whichever part of the country they are looking to buy. (For the record, the Round-Up's first flat - 'sunny aspect, two large bedrooms, balcony, must be seen' was found via the site but that is neither here nor there - well it was there but where 'there' is remains a secret.)

Buyers can specify criteria such as whether they want to rent or buy, house or flat, number of bedrooms, postcode or area, furnished or unfurnished and the Round-Up assumes the site's new owners will possibly include a number of other criteria more becoming of Daily Mail-reading homebuyers.

Such as:

Nearest asylum centre
Soft drug use in local area
Number of single mothers
Number of working mothers
The kids today!
Number of 'bobbies on the beat'/average age of policemen (are they getting younger?)
How long ago area 'was all green fields'
What the area was like 'in the good old days'

(Speaking of right-wing politics there's been further fallout from the US presidential election, with the internet proving a breeding ground for conspiracy theories, gossip and much anti-Bush tittle-tattle. Read more here.)

But still on the subject of the media, the BBC has this week announced it will shut a number of websites following an investigation by the government into potential anticompetitive practices at the Beeb.

In the BBC's own words, the sites have been earmarked for closure because they "were either too similar to non-BBC sites or because their value to audiences was believed to be insufficient relative to the risk of negative market impact."

Which in a nutshell means the BBC was providing web content which didn't really fulfil much purpose beyond putting innovative commercial ventures out of business.

It turns out providing services such as fantasy football competitions, soap opera gossip sites and computer games review websites isn't strictly within the BBC's remit as a broadcaster.

A number of readers, who tend to get pretty heated about such matters immediately wrote in demanding that the government stop dictating what the BBC news channels report and how they cover political issues - demanding Auntie remains independent from such meddling.

One reader even demanded that the government leave that nice John Simpson chap alone.

OK.

The Round-Up at this point would refer back to the bit about football, soaps and computer games - none of which have a direct impact on the way the BBC covers foreign affairs or domestic news and none of which have a great deal to do with John Simpson.

The BBC's review of Halo 2 and its coverage of the war in Iraq are hardly the same issue (though you are more likely to find weapons of mass destruction in a computer game these days).

There was never any suggestion that the BBC's news coverage would be affected by the Graf report but silicon.com applauds the move to create a level playing field for online brands which don't enjoy the vast backing of the television licence fee... and not just because silicon.com is an online brand which doesn't enjoy the vast backing of the television licence fee.

(You will note our own coverage of fantasy football, computer games and soap operas - with the possible exception of the Oracle/PeopleSoft saga - is fairly limited so we're confident there is little conflict of interest here.)

But that's not to say we don't make mistakes. Occasionally.

In fact, just last week there was a mistake in the Round-Up which should be flagged up and apologised for.

A reader wrote in to point out that Lord Sainsbury is not, as the Round-Up claimed, the chairman of Sainsbury's, adding that such a blunder represented "credibility lost" for the Round-Up.

"Since when has a government minister been a chairman of a plc at the same time?" he asked.

How right he was - Lord Sainsbury is of course just major shareholder, president and surviving heir to the Sainsbury's estate and fortune - and not chairman.

(Speaking of reader feedback, please feel free to help the silicon.com editorial team settle a dispute which has torn a divide through the heart of the department. The topic of debate is: which can be thrown further, a tennis ball or a cricket ball? We're not talking about firing them out of cannons, or from a medieval catapult - they must be thrown. Sounds like a trade off between launch velocity and momentum, to the Round-Up but which could be slung further? Get involved, email editorial@silicon.com)

And finally, he's a "Rocket man, burning up his fuse up here alone..."

No, the Round-Up isn't talking about the self-appointed foul-mouthed Queen of England, Sir Elton John, but rather Jeff Bezos whose company has doubtless shifted more than a few of Sir Elton's CDs. But the Round-Up digresses.

In fact, things have gone so swimmingly well with Amazon that Bezos is looking for a way to spend his squillions of dollars - and what better investment than blowing it all on space ships.

That's right - Bezos is going head-to-head with Richard Branson and investing in the design and manufacture of space craft which will carry manned flights into the great unknown.

"I very much hope to go up one day, and I think that will happen," Bezos said.

That's as maybe Jeff, but in the words of Sir Elton: "I think it's going to be a long, long time..."

The Round-Up is now off to throw tennis balls and cricket alternately down the local park. Until next week, look after yourselves, watch the skies for cricket balls and wear a poppy on Sunday.