a hacked-off employee, insecure government networks and a fake phone.

Not exactly world-shattering events - unless of course you're writing a third-rate straight to video drama. Certainly nothing that counts as an "emergency" or would be worthy of a blue flashing light, come to that.

When you put these and the other events into the context of the number of people who die needless deaths each day (and I'm not even thinking about gun-crime victims, curable diseases or car accidents) then none of this amounts to a hill o' beans.

Maybe something a little less shrill would be more realistic and convey a real sense of what the job entails (such as endless paperwork). But then of course you couldn't swagger around as if you were about to save the world - or more importantly, get admiration from a bunch of credulous private-dicks with so little proper work that they can waste their time at conferences.

A lot of security people are convinced it's a vague hypothetical possibility that barely reaches beyond the realm of urban legend. As far as anyone knows, this is the first time anyone's claimed that it's actually been done for real on a real HD in a real case, and not on a few square mm of platter on a specialised test rig somewhere in a lab.

Got any further info? This is the big news item in the entire story, or quite possibly of the year.[*]

[*] - Well, month at the very least.[**]

[**} - Although the Palin hack could have a pretty strong claim there I guess. Or the Lehman fail. Or ... well y'know. But it's big news in the security field.

Are you even old enough to remember John Draper & blue boxing?

It's not like this kind of thing is new or anything ...

::whistles::

jake

former member, homebrew computer club ...

Sorry, Dan ... I know your name is "Goodin" ... Call it left-right dyslexia ... coupled with a coolish evening here in Sonoma ... numb fingers.

jake

herb caen taught me to type ... sue him for typoes, me for content ...

This story fits the new site layout. Trite and useless...

.... ..... Mutual IntelAIgents ..... MuI7 on Paroled Patrols and Stealth Missions/Plausibly Deniable Engagements ..... Contact.

"how about protecting the world from bogus emergencies? " .... By Pete Posted Wednesday 17th September 2008 22:41 GMT

Pete,

You sound more than a tad peeved and frustrated at the Lack of any Positive Constructive Innovative Action with Beta Intelligence Use/AudioVisual Media ProgramMIng.

What Better Place to Register Great Game Changing Changes/Novel Artificial Intelligence Research and dDevelopments for Virtualisation Facility than Freely here with El Reg Readership Support and Cloud Hosting?

Presently, in the Bigger Picture Show, are Einstein 2 OverSight ShortComings being AIdDressed which will certainly make your question, ... "how about protecting the world from bogus emergencies?" .... M00t.

There's a whole Lotta Shaking Going On, out There, Pete, Give it a Stir and Find ITs Quantum Solace.

GCHQ Quantum Beta Proficiency Test #XXXX. Red Bull Winged Flight Flag Test too for Two Worlds Apart and Both Resolvedly Determined to Win Win....... for you just never know who may be Interested and Listening/Mulling and Pondering/Learning of Greater Possibilities with Shared Passions Leading the Way and Providing the Tools and Construction Materials.

"... investigators were forced to scour through its remains using an electron microscope, and the price of $100,000 per pass."

*cough* rubbish *cough*

"An information technology employee for one of the world's top stock brokerages is let go, but before he leaves, he plants a logic bomb that knocks 3,000 of the firm's workstations offline."

Well some pretty major investment banks have collapsed and it wasn't due to hackers or terrorist, rather el Presidenty borrowed lots of money from the Federal Reserve which printed money against the loan, which got ploughed into bad loans because it had nowhere else to go, which went bad because Americans were paying inflated property values with devalued dollars.

And of course 20 billion or so of that overspend is the DHS protecting USA and it's investment banks from devastating attacks.....

Sort of a little bit ironic, don't you think?

""The Cloner," as he referred to it, included a console with a fully functional keyboard..."

Damn, these guys are clever. Back in my day, cloners had barely functioning keyboards, often with half the keys missing. Sometimes you'd press the # key but get an @ sign, or vice versa. It's nice to know that cloner technology has been keeping pace with the rest of the computing world.

I miss the old site...plus the icons too