Zero: the number of security experts Ted Koppel consulted for his hysterical book about cyberwar

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Ted Koppel: No, I did not.

Thanks for the confirmation Ted, you’re an idiot.

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Well at least he didn’t bloviate. Most Washingtoons would have taken several paragraphs to say no.

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This kind of thing doesn’t even surprise me anymore. Bruce Schneier was on to something when he started his Movie Plot Threat Contests. Even in the public sector so much time/effort is spent protecting one in a million type threats simply because they sound scary while real - and much more manageable/practical - issues are simply ignored.
Then, when it comes to the press, the more sky you claim to be falling the better. Why care about a “cyber pearl harbor” when our systems are already hemorrhaging from a million little attacks, seemingly, every day. If China is your worry, up until hostilities turn hot, they have more interst in our systems being online as they want to be able to access them every bit as much as we do.
Error Code: ID10T

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I heard him on the radio the other day and it was definatly ‘end of the world’ crap.
As for our power grid, it’s not actually interconnected enough to be actually taken out. Honestly, it can take itself down better than any ‘attack’ could. If I remember from the last NYC blackout, there were ConEd guys actually saying that there’s a lot about the grid that noone actually knows how it exactly works, that there’s even some ‘magic’ envolved :slight_smile:
And if something does go down it’s not like there aren’t tens of thousands of electric company employes that would have to fix it anyway. I highly doubt it could be as bad as a hurricane or a really big snow/ice storm, and I’ll give full credit to the electric company that can actually get everything up and running again, and really fast dispite the enormity of it.

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Re: Grid, that’s very true. One of the key factors in keeping the US grid up is simply the fact that it hasn’t crashed yet. There are key areas that can cause cascaded failures, like we saw in the NYC blackout. Problem is, no one knows what/where all of those failure points are…

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Weren’t they talking about this twenty years ago already? Didn’t I see the movie ?

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Who in their right mind takes Ted Koppel seriously to begin with?

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Yes, straight to the point, he [Ted] is full of shit, I do like that as well, and a good point you’ve made.

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Hell, there isn’t even just ONE grid in the U.S. There are three major ones (the one for the western part of the U.S. is called the ‘Western Interconnect’). It’s not possible to take out THE entire grid simply because there ISN’T ‘one’ grid for the U.S.

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I think I heard the same interview.

Koppel: “We’ve got to do something!”

Seriously, it was like he was reenacting the Fallout back story but with cyber security threats instead of nuclear war. No, wait he worked nuclear terror in there too.

if you want to bring down multiple grids evil haxxor magic is not needed - only a cruise ship and good timing :smile:

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But those pesky facts keep ruining the narrative.

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Ah, I see. They’re only “experts” if they agree with what you think. Got it.

Yea, Ted is full of shit.
Ted’s idea -
Step one - Scary book premise
Step two - …
Step three - profit!

Most people that go on about speaking of these things don’t know anything.
I had a friend that attended a recent security seminar and one of the speakers from the county started talking in serious tones about the security threat with regards to youngsters and social media. The dangers of this, the dangers of that, blah, blah forever. Fucking Facebook and Twitter accounts of teenagers.
My friend used an industry standard tool to hit their web site to do a security check (which he showed me) - in laymen’s terms F fucking minus.

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He still looks top heavy.

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Excellent article! Koppel IS an asshole, without doubt. And Cory ‘strikes’ again! Way to go!

doesn’t he mean a short blackout. he does know that the power will get fixed and come back on right?
maybe he has coupons in the back of his book for buckets of potato soup and buckets of bibles?

i’d worry much more about a natural or constructed virus pandemic then a few hours/days of using candles/flashlights and possibly eating cold food.

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Seems like a good time to plug Maggie’s book (and her grid posts).

Miss you, Mags!

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