An interesting though struck me recently after reading the n’th blog and n’th tabloid report on China’s issues with their attacks on ‘other’ internet citizens.
There is little doubt about the impact that China’s rapid industrialisation is having on the global economy as it is topic of conversation with everyone from politicians to laymen, but, the one thing that I believe that no one has considered is their technological immaturity.
Think back into the golden haze of the late 90’s, the average internet user was still connecting via 56k modem, spam was practically unheard of and the biggest worry that you had with computer security was whether or not you had boot sector protection turned on or not! If you could jump forward ten years from the 90’s and had a conversation with your future self about PC protection products you would think you where talking gibberish, anti malware, anti spyware, endpoint security, zero day sploits, phishing, pharming, patching, on and on and on…. It’s a fact that a lot of these now common day terms where not prevalent in common day use except amongst hardcore security experts, but the interesting thing that comes out of this is that its not the terms, the attacks or the products – but the way in which we actually now conduct ourselves in terms of patching, signature updates and not doing daft things online – even the novice users are aware of these concepts!
We have learned the hard way, adapted and improved – after 10 years of evolution.
Does China have the benefit of 10 years of evolution, I think not.
Have the y been thrust into the middle of a complex security maze with the general populace thrashing around with the same psyche that the rest of the wired world had 10 years ago – almost definitely – you can say that they are behind the curve somewhat!
The moral question is then do we cut some slack to China’s internet citizens until they have matured enough to operate in the wired world? The optimist inside me would like to say yes and the world will follow suite, in all practicality what will happen is that the media frenzy surrounding China will simply keep on building as they struggle to get to grips with the security problems.
Given China’s poor international record and the wave after wave of wired attacks pouring out of their address space its going to take a very long time to for things to change….
An interesting though struck me recently after reading the n’th blog and n’th tabloid report on China’s issues with their attacks on ‘other’ internet citizens.
There is little doubt about the impact that China’s rapid industrialisation is having on the global economy as it is topic of conversation with everyone from politicians to laymen, but, the one thing that I believe that no one has considered is their technological immaturity.
Think back into the golden haze of the late 90’s, the average internet user was still connecting via 56k modem, spam was practically unheard of and the biggest worry that you had with computer security was whether or not you had boot sector protection turned on or not! If you could jump forward ten years from the 90’s and had a conversation with your future self about PC protection products you would think you where talking gibberish, anti malware, anti spyware, endpoint security, zero day sploits, phishing, pharming, patching, on and on and on…. It’s a fact that a lot of these now common day terms where not prevalent in common day use except amongst hardcore security experts, but the interesting thing that comes out of this is that its not the terms, the attacks or the products – but the way in which we actually now conduct ourselves in terms of patching, signature updates and not doing daft things online – even the novice users are aware of these concepts!
We have learned the hard way, adapted and improved – after 10 years of evolution.
Does China have the benefit of 10 years of evolution, I think not.
Have the y been thrust into the middle of a complex security maze with the general populace thrashing around with the same psyche that the rest of the wired world had 10 years ago – almost definitely – you can say that they are behind the curve somewhat!
The moral question is then do we cut some slack to China’s internet citizens until they have matured enough to operate in the wired world? The optimist inside me would like to say yes and the world will follow suite, in all practicality what will happen is that the media frenzy surrounding China will simply keep on building as they struggle to get to grips with the security problems.
Given China’s poor international record and the wave after wave of wired attacks pouring out of their address space its going to take a very long time to for things to change….
Posted in General, security | Tags: bot net, china, comment, security