Chinese Cyber Attacks A Self Fulfilling Prophecy?

from the hype-for-the-sake-of-hype dept

The press love to create a good war, even in cyberspace. I've avoided posting any of the numerous (and, yes, they're everywhere) news stories screaming about how the Chinese are hacking American websites all over the place, because I'm not sure I believe it. There's not much evidence to suggest that it's actually the Chinese who are doing the defacements, and if it actually is folks over in that part of the world, it's not clear that they're doing any more damage than your average script kiddie. It just reminds me of any time the US seems to be about to fight with someone and suddenly there are all sorts of articles about how people of that ethnicity are doing something bad to Americans - without much proof. Now there's an article over at Attrition.org (and if anyone would know about it, these would be the guys) suggesting that there's nothing special about these hacks. In fact, publicizing these few hacks (which aren't all that different than hacks that were going on well before all this happened) may create a self-fulfilling prophecy of more hacks, just because people read all the publicity about these hacks. Of course, the journalists wouldn't mind that - it would give them more to write about.

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