Re: [ISN] Cyber-terror drama skates on thin Black Ice

From: InfoSec News (isn@private)
Date: Fri Feb 27 2004 - 00:05:22 PST

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    Forwarded from: Jason Scott <jason@private>
    
    What originally got me on the ISN list in the first place was William
    inviting me after I got into a back-and-forth with Verton about his
    previous book "Confessions of Teenage Hackers", which is basically
    riddled with hyperbole, factual errors in regard to history, and
    possible exploitation of underage interview subjecs if you hold it to
    the right light.
    
    My apparent concentration of focus on Verton is actually not; it's
    part of a larger project that I've been idly working on to collate and
    list major errors in many works, including those by Hafner, Markoff,
    Littman, Goodell and so on. It is very personally troubling to me when
    these books are later used as source materials for untold numbers of
    school reports, academic papers, and possibly even laws, and they
    simply get facts wrong. However, only Verton has taken the time to
    tell me to "get a life" and other similar jibes.
    
    As a result, I purchased his Black Ice book, intending to see if the
    approach he took in Confessions was a standard practice or just a
    fluke of bad reporting taking on a subject he wasn't too good with.
    
    Here, I encountered a problem: the book is astoundingly boring, so
    much so that several wanderings into the chapters caused me to retreat
    like a dog that's run into brambles. The subject is vague
    (cyberterrorism) and his writing is not all that engaging. Trying to
    work up interest in the subject at all is difficult enough, what with
    the whole idea of "cyberterrorism" just being another hype term to
    give the security industry some boost. So I abandoned the chore of
    reading Verton's book for the time being; it stares at me as I speak,
    mocking me from my "at-hand" bookshelf.
    
    So naturally I take an interest when I see an article from somewhere
    else going after the book and its stylistic problems, and I see that
    the reviewer doesn't enjoy Verton's leaning towards hyperbole and
    portrayal of imminent threat any more than I do. But here we also
    encounter a problem.
    
    Richard Greene, the reporter for the Register, isn't all that much better.
    
    I had the unenviable position of watching all sides playing out in the
    Gweeds/cDc/l0pht/Sir Dystic soap opera Greene orchestrated, and I got
    to see that in several critical cases, he went for one-source
    reporting, and throwing e-mails by god-knows-who with
    god-knows-what-motivations verbatim into his articles. It was at best
    disheartening and at worst angering to watch him apply his chainsaw,
    and it has taken the heart out of any enjoyment I used to have reading
    "juicy" Register articles. Of course they're juicy: guess who's
    supplying the juice?
    
    The point of all this I'm saying? Watch the bylines. Match bylines to
    articles, match them to books. The tendons of hype will make
    themselves clear to you.
    
    On Thu, 26 Feb 2004, InfoSec News wrote:
    
    > http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/55/35816.html
    >
    > [ http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0072227877/c4iorg  - WK]
    
    
    
    
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