Comments on: No Privacy Chernobyls

By: Pete

Pete — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 09:55:43 +0000

“I’d love to have to eat those words.”
You don’t really mean that, do you?
Pete

By: Allan

Allan — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 11:59:22 +0000

I would add: a large enough breach of authentication info such that the standard means of authentication become essentially worthless. This also requires a motive to exploit authentication systems across organizations, industries, etc. So either a new way to monetize massively parallel fraud, or a motivated attack.

By: Ted

Ted — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 11:21:25 +0000

PRIVACY is done, and this is increasingly the expectation (see how kids deal with Myspace).
The Chernobyl will come from some sort of computing infrastructure that goes down either accidentally or because it was attacked.
The Day The Phones Stopped is a very, very old discussion of this. http://www.amazon.com/Day-Phones-Stopped-Ringing/dp/1556112866
Adam, you remember from your scanning days that putting things online gives rise to unexpected outcomes. Richard Clark is a blowhard, but I expect that nobody knows how much stuff is online that shouldn’t be. But my guess is “a danged lot of stuff.”

By: Simson

Simson — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 15:42:46 +0000

I agree. None of these rise to the “Chernobyl” level.
Why not? Because they do not directly impact millions of people.
So what would?
1 – having $500-$999 withdrawn from 50 million bank accounts throughout the US in 3-5 innocuous transactions.
2 – Having gmail’s search “fail open” so that any search done on Google turns up lots of private gmail email messages.
3 – millions of cell phones going into “eavesdrop” mode, having the data archived, and having 1-minute segments of everybody’s ambient conversations (or cell phone conversations) sent by email to lots of other people.