Kendall: I have long felt that the "unexpected", something exogenous, would be the only thing to seriously take this market down.
It might have been the Y2K concern; but that passed with hardly a ripple.
But last night I was watching C-Span. The Senate was engaged in hearings concerning government computer security.
Their primary "guest" was Kevin Mitnick, a well known "hacker" who got busted, and spent some time in the pokey. What he said scared me, and clearly scared many of the Senate committee members.
Kevin told his story; he was a hacker, but hacked not for money (he claimed that he never made a dime) but for the intellectual challenge, because he was curious to see if it could be done.
He did it, boy did he do it. Asked how, he said that the weakest link in the corporate and government "security" chain was people. He'd call a government agency (Social Security and the IRS) or hundreds of private corporations. He was soft-spoken, asked questions often posing as just another government employee or corporate employee or corporate vendor. He had no difficulty finding someone to talk to him. And he, (I don't know the tech talk he used) ALWAYS got in, got what he wanted.
He said that TODAY, key government agencies, private firms and the entire internet can be shut down. He said further that firms are scrambling to secure their systems. But that until the "weak-link", people, are strengthened it will make little difference. He suggested that a video be produced, shown to all corporate and government employees...as a way to alert and perhaps prevent what he and other hackers do so easily.
His biggest fear was that a foreign country might hire a hacker, for pay...perhaps a lot of pay, so that power-grids, communications, perhaps the NYSE and NASDAQ would be
shut down. The consequences could be ominous. The entire U.S. economy, internet related and connected, might simply cease to function. He was not asked, nor did he offer, how long this might be.
He said too that the internet was developed to allow people amd firms to "share" information.
When asked, he said that the Linux system might be a better alternative because it was far more "public". I'm not sure what he meant by that.
I was impressed by Kevin Mitknick because he seemed to know very well what he talked about; that he was a free man and had no ax to grind; that he seemed sincerely to want to help the Senate committee "solve" what they perceived to be a serious problem. He said too that punitive legislation designed to deter hackers was not likely to be effective.
Perhaps you or others might consider and discuss this "problem". I am simply too low-tech to offer much. It was all I could do to understand, in a rudimentary way, that there was a problem...and one that seemed to deeply concern the Senate Committee. (Lee) |
