Epic Blackberry outage leads to epic turd-FUD headlines like "Welcome to the World Of Cyber-Terror Vulnerability"

I didn't think it was possible to think any less of disgraced former New York Times reporter Judith Miller. But then, sweet fancy Jesus, I read her analysis of the Great Blackberry Outage of 2011. For Fox News.

I present to you the pull quote:

Cyber- and germ terrorism are quiet killers, and therefore, threats that are easy to underestimate. We ignore them at our peril.

Never attribute to mysterious cyberterrorism plots what can be traced to poor network management decisions. (via Brian Krebs)

• [Ceronomus]

  There is a reason she ended up working for Faux News.

  • [phisrow]

    I wonder if she still uses the phrase “Homicide bombing” unironically?

• [phisrow]

  So, if I am to understand this correctly, RIM managed to fuck up in a big way, causing service outages of their needlessly-centralized-by-design system worldwide.
  Other than some grumbling and inconvenience, essentially nothing serious resulted from the aforesaid worldwide rolling outages.

  Ergo, We Cannot Let Down Our Guard Against BIOTERROR!

  What color is the sky in her world?

  • [Antinous / Moderator]

    What color is the sky in her world?

    Twenty bucks says that the east is red.

• [K. Williams]

  Hanlon’s razor: Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.  Or in lay terms: cock-up before conspiracy.

  • [EH]

    Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.

    Are you referring to RIM or Judy Miller?

    • [K. Williams]

      RIM.

• [EH]

  Who’s the jerk who invented “we ignore X at our peril,” anyway? Watch it be Shakespeare.

  What color is the sky in her world?

  I’m pretty sure it’s Crystal Clear, unfortunately.

• [Offlogic]

  Just hearing her name makes me want to do unpleasant things in retaliation for Miller ever being called a “journalist”.

• [Andrew Squitiro]

  Wut.

• [Pip_R_Lagenta]

  While it might be a rule in ordinary society to “never attribute to mysterious cyberterrorism plots what can be traced to poor network management decisions”, at Fox News the rule is “always attribute to mysterious cyberterrorism plots that which can be demonstrably shown to be, in fact, poor network management decisions.”

• [Frank W]

  Why must it be either malice or stupidity? Those are two great tastes that go great together.

• [Creesto4 Lynch]

  So I guess this is a prelude to massive, Republican-driven laws to prevent future occurences of fearful events.. Big Brother already has the tech to track conversations (read as Natural Language Algorithms) over cellular networks, so this would just be the next step. Wheeeee!!!

  • [CountZero]

    They can try, but unless they can invade Berkshire and isolate Slough from the rest of the UK, they’ve not got much hope.
    RIM have probably sacked all the sysadmins who understood the system in order to save money, after their pad debacle.

    • [MikeRich]

      Well when you explain it would have the result of cutting off Slough from the rest of the World, an American invasion doesn’t sound quite so bad after all.

• [trefecta]

  What is this article even about really? How do you get from “Internal Infrastructure Failure / Accident in Canadian Telecommunications Corporation” to “Western National Security In Danger Due to Cyber-Terrorism”?

  How many people would be harmed directly if global communications were knocked out?

• [Frank W]

  Found this one over at Dangerous Minds: “My Blackberry is not working”.

• [jameslosey]

  Amazing how blatantly contradictory it is: “The mysterious, world-wide virus that crippled BlackBerrys this week and spread like the plague – more on that threat later… An [SIC] RIM spokesman has said that the outage was caused by what Security Week called ‘a core switch failure within RIM’s infrastructure,’ and not by a deliberate disabling attack.” Perhaps mysterious at first, but nothing a little journalism couldn’t clear up.

• [formosaman]

  Is cyber-terrorism stuff like cybermen suicide bombers? 

• [Soliloquy]

  This cyber-journalist’s cyber-article on cyber-attacks cyber-sucks.

• [nehoccramcire]

  This article is so riddled with editorial errors it’s almost impossible to follow her skewed logic.

  “But sadly all too federal resources and focus are being allocated to eliminating or reducing this grave vulnerability.”

  WTF?

  “The “Bio-Response Report Card,” a recent report from a private group headed by two former senators – Bob Graham or Florida and Jim Talent of Missouri – both experts on WMD – warns that the U.S remains far too vulnerable to a naturally or deliberately inspired germ warfare attacks despite the expenditure of billions of dollars and more than a decade of focus.”

  Huh?

  “Pulitzer prize winning author” my azz.

• [Lackey]

  Is there ANY chance of persuading this woman to become Amish?

• [Jonathan Peterson]

  article appears to have been typed by a monkey and reasoned by a hampster – or the other way around.