[ISN] Conficker Scare: It’s the Media’s Fault

From: InfoSec News <alerts_at_private>
Date: Fri, 3 Apr 2009 06:16:16 -0600 (CST)
http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2009/04/01/conficker-scare-its-the-medias-fault/

By Ben Worthen
The Wall Street Journal
April 1, 2009

The Conficker postmortems are starting. The early word: Shoot the 
messengers.

Conficker, in case you missed it, is the computer virus that many media 
accounts said would be “damaging millions of computers on April Fool’s 
Day” (CNN), and cause “millions of computers around the world could go 
into meltdown” (The Sun).

Now that it’s pretty clear that April 1 is a non-event, members of the 
self-appointed Conficker Cabal formed to stop the virus—and hype it 
breathlessly along the way—are passing the buck.

“It’s really complicated and media outlets have a hard time 
understanding it,” said Rick Wesson, chief executive of security company 
Support Intelligence, Wednesday. He earlier called Conficker a “digital 
Pearl Harbor.”

He has a point of course. Sensational stories sell. But every 
sensational Conficker story we’ve seen also quotes a few security 
experts making sensational claims.

[...]


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Received on Fri Apr 03 2009 - 05:16:16 PDT

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