NBC News Confuses the World About Cyber-Security 144
Nerval's Lobster writes "In a video report posted Feb. 4, NBC News reporter Richard Engel, with the help of a security analyst, two fresh laptops, a new cell phone, and a fake identity, pretended to go online with the technical naiveté of a Neanderthal housepet. (Engel's video blog is here.) Almost as soon as he turned on the phone in the Sochi airport, Engel reported hackers snooping around, testing the security of the machines. Engel's story didn't explain whether 'snooping around' meant someone was port-scanning his device in particular with the intention of cracking its security and prying out its secrets, no matter how much effort it took, or if the 'snooping' was other WiFi devices looking for access points and trying automatically to connect with those that were unprotected. Judging from the rest of his story, it was more likely the latter. Engel also reported hackers snooping around a honeypot set up by his security consultant which, as Gartner analyst Paul Proctor also pointed out in a blog posting, is like leaving the honey open and complaining when it attracts flies. When you try to communicate with anything, it also tries to communicate with you; that's how networked computers work: They communicate with each other. None of the 'hacks' or intrusions Engel created or sought out for himself have anything to do with Russia or Sochi, however; those 'hacks' he experienced could have happened in any Starbucks in the country, and does almost every day, Proctor wrote. That's why there is antivirus software for phones and laptops. It's why every expert, document, video, audio clip or even game that has anything at all to do with cybersecurity makes sure to mention you should never open attachments from spam email, or in email from people you don't know, and you should set up your browser to keep random web sites from downloading and installing anything they want on your computer. But keep up the fear-mongering."
And these are supposed to be professional media (Score:5, Interesting)
This NBC thing is why I treat blogs and traditional media with equal amounts of respect and skepticism. The "real" media is actually far more prone to making things up wholesale than any blogger, who lives and dies by reputation, ever did.
Re:It's almost too easy (Score:5, Interesting)
I'll admit Slashdot has serious balls to link to a news site that just got its own redesign, with the exact response that this site's beta got (and deserved just as much).
No, it deserved it more. Next to nbcnews.com, beta.slashdot.org is a masterpiece of clean Web design. (Hell, the new nbcnews.com makes buzzfeed.com look not too bad.)
Funny.. (Score:4, Interesting)
Stay strong people... uprate slashbeta comments despite this blatant attack on the userbase.
Re:Classic Slashdot (Score:4, Interesting)
I thought people come here for content, not stylesheets?