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from the blatantly-obvious-is-hard-to-comprehend dept.
John Arquilla at ACM writes:
What a pity that senior leaders in the American government and intelligence community have decided to play political football with the alleged Russian hacks of John Podesta's and other Democrats' emails. By using these intrusions to gin up fears about the "integrity" of the electoral process—which is already befouled by the focus on finding and spreading dirt on the opposition—the real story is being neglected. And what is that real story? It is that, despite more than two decades of consistent public warnings that have reached the highest levels of government, cybersecurity throughout much of the world is in a shameful state of unpreparedness.
Take the United States, for example. Since the mid-1990s, there have been approximately 200 cybersecurity bills brought before Congress. Only one has passed, quite recently at that, and it only calls for voluntary information-sharing about cyber incidents. Legislation aside, there have also been several government-sponsored commissions and top-level exercises focused on understanding and illuminating the cyber threat. Each of these has signaled that "the red light is flashing;" that is, American cybersecurity is in very poor shape. Indeed, former cyber czar Richard Clarke and Robert Knake, in their book, Cyber War, list the U.S. as having the poorest cyber defenses among the leading developed countries.
TL;DR: The lesson(s) are: we must improve defenses, better use of strong encryption, and don't wait for government policy to protect you.
Previously:
Obama Orders Sweeping Review of International Hacking Tied to U.S. Elections
How Hackers Broke into John Podesta and Colin Powell's Gmail Accounts
(Score: 4, Interesting) by VLM on Wednesday December 28 2016, @08:52PM
nuclear combat toe-to-toe with the Russkies because John Podesta
The only minor disagreement I'd have with your post is given Hillaries crazy history and warmongering and the neocons being pushed to her side etc, I think crazy Hillary would be calling for nuclear war with Russia even if Podesta never got p0wned. We'd have boots on the ground in Syria and Iran and probably the Ukraine and Cuba etc etc.
In that way, if the Russians have known her for decades and known she's a nutcase warmongering lunatic, which is how I see her, then the Russians were being peacenik flower children by powning some moron and derailing her campaign. I mean they could have gone all JFK next time she drives past a book depository, but if you're trying to save the planet from nuclear annihilation then the Russians did it with a certain panache and style you often don't see in cutthroat international spy vs spy. If the BS narrative is true, which it probably isn't, Putin really is a bro after all.
The whole topic really is a no-lose scenario for Putin-bro. He's almost certainly a victim of followers of a dead political belief system mindlessly lashing out to strike anyone blame anyone other than themselves for their obsolete worldview being rejected. Or an innocent bystander of a McCarthy-ish witch hunt. Or he turned the tables on the CIA who are always interfering with elections by getting us back, in a totally elegant way by never telling a lie (no one ever disputes the truth of the leaks, just whines about them happening). Or he's a brutal bastard who heartlessly did what he had to, so save the world from a warmongering lunatic bent on nuclear annihilation, sorta a Russian 007 savin the world. Or maybe he's just a bro for knocking out a violent leftist agitator. Or maybe he's just flexing muscles to show what he can do, gotta respect strength a little bit even if it was kinda a jerk thing to do.
If the Russians did it, thats cool. Maybe if "we" don't like it, "we" should stop trying to control the rest of the world and he won't mess with us next time. Thats cool.
Almost certainly the death of baby boomer liberalism is causing this over the top "stages of grief" reaction that he had nothing to do with other than being a convenient whipping boy.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 29 2016, @05:48AM
> If the Russians did it, thats cool.
It is amazing how easily you are led around by the ring of tribalism in your nose.
Its like you have no principles greater than "four feet good! two feet bad!"