HNN – The story of the great Y2K swindle…. – January 07, 2000

The Setup

What do billions of dollars, billions of useless books, and billions of prophetic statements have in common? If you guessed the infamous Y2K rollover, you are probably one of the millions of people who were informed of some global catastrophe set to take place the first of this year. There was not a paper in publication these last few years that didn’t mention some sort of doomsday consequence related to our society’s dependancy on computers.

If you are any kind of normal human being you would have expected something interesting out of this entire fiasco. I expected something self-fulfilling. Mobs of fanatics and drunks taking to the streets with automatic weapons shouting verses out of the Bible, siphoning gas and stealing stereo equipment. The most eventful happenings in Denver and Colorado Springs were a few kids begging the cops to beat them. It was worse than that when the Broncos won the Super Bowl.

Digitally, I was surprised to see the overall lack of systems compromised. I expected Attrition to be flooded up to their necks in defacements. The staff had informed me that they were planning on keeping a pretty good monitor on things. Their major concern was cross-continental defacements that represented some anti-government motives. Sadly, there was no largescale cyber-shootout. All was quiet in the land of the double-oh.

However, I don’t think that we are out of the clear yet. A few issues still need to be addressed. Just because the infamous “Millenium Bug” turned out to be a farce[in a general sense] does not constitute a sigh of relief. Every threat that took place before the rollover is just as real. Every security issue unaddressed prior to the first is still something to reckon with. I would argue that we have introduced a whole breed of new problems that have absolutely nothing to do with something so trivial as a system date.

The History

There was a time when the Internet was occupied by a select few. In order to participate you required a little more than standard knowledge of a computer. If you didn’t have some kind of dialup account provided by your employer you were forced to shell out a great deal of money for a meager ten hours. This regulation provided a positive future for the Internet; a handful of knowledgeable people were constructing the fabric of the system while another handful of knowledgeable people were engaging in mastering it. The only browser that anyone used was NCSA Mosaic. Any application you used was from the Trumpet Software suite. All the files you ever wanted you obtained from Walnut Creek or the Washington Archives. This environment led to quick growth and a plethora of new frontiers.

In recent times, manufacturers have made it incredibly easy to hop on the bandwagon and begin anew through your phone line. Granted, this is a great thing. The Internet is probably the single greatest invention of the twentieth century. It possesses an endless wealth of knowledge and power at your fingertips. These extremely positive qualities make it very hard to believe that there is a downside.

An obvious issue is this recent obsession with the New Year. If another Melissa virus or Y2K-ish event emerges the media will overexpose it beyond its true threat. Many elements play into this exposure ranging from computers rapidly becoming a part of everyone’s life to a reporter’s burning urge to write a great story.

What can we attribute this obsession to? Ignorance. As aforementioned, the Internet is no longer occupied by a majority of intelligent and computer-literate individuals. It is very simple to just hop online as a casual user and be taken advantage of. It is also easy for a fairly casual user to land a job in charge of the systems that govern your use of the Internet. Entrusting this kind of information into incapable hands is unnerving but it happens everyday. Bad people are out there, you know.

The Dilemma

We now have an equation that doesn’t balance out. We have an extremely disproportioned Internet community that consists of ignorant masses that can be led by simple fear and heresy. On the other side of the fence we have that original handful[sizewise], some of which are running around like vigilantes for the good of the gangsters. The other piece of that pie is looking to ruin your life, take your credit card information, and load countless virii on your computer. It is very doubtful that something like this will happen to everyone[this is an extreme scenario], but you get the point.

The broadcast ability that the Internet provides is a potential tool to instigate a nationwide scare. Imagine if a malicious user was to spam an authentic looking hoax proclaiming that a new generation of virus has infested itself in United States’ vital computer systems and another country is extorting us. “By the way, I work for the Department of Energy. I’m not supposed to be releasing this. I am jeopardizing my job for the greater good here.” It may be a little farfetched, however it’s the principle that is important. Due to the media potentially telling an event such as this to the public with spokespeople “refusing to comment,” we usher in an age where a simple rumor can affect an entire country in a very negative manner.

Further banking off of the ignorance of the online community, people have authored worms cleverly disguised that are zipping around the world as you read this. The media tends to focus more on a scare tactic than an educative standpoint. This take on such events only breeds more ignorance and it discourages people from the truth of the matter.

It is my fear that if you were to take a general poll of the streets asking fairly straightforward questions about the topics in this article you would get some pretty weird looks on people’s faces. They would probably also tell you that they think “hackers” are the root of all evil and that they don’t know much about the culture except that they “use viruses” and “fuck with people.” Who is to blame?

The Coverup

One of the biggest misunderstandings of the general public is what really goes on behind the scenes. I will be the first to admit that the defacements that I have contributed to required little or no skill. While I may have capitalized on an existing vulnerability, the root of the problem is the same. You can code in as many languages as you want or be a total newbie and it is still just as easy to manipulate these vulnerabilities. If the general public knew how simple it was to actually compromise a server[excluding the hours/days/weeks to code and conceptualize, but to dotslash-hax0r], they would have a fit! Even more discouraging is the fact that such high profile sites fall victim to these attacks.

This is what is depressing. Our so-called security experts have fallen to mere children fooling around after school. As regular Hackernews readers are probably informed, the state of the Internet is slowly deteriorating into a free-for-all.

Which brings me to my next point, cyberterrorism. Most officials will attest that the United States is ready to defend against such attacks. However, at the current rate of growth concerning infrastructures and software chalking up the version numbers, staying on top of things these days is virtually impossible. A chain is only as strong as its weakest link, and I’ll be damned if those webservers weren’t some mighty weak links. Even though the majority of classified information is maintained through a SneakerNet[Nike or Reebok version 2.2 and higher], there are careless individuals who will leave sensitive data for the taking.

The End

Generally, people don’t have much to fear. The army of computer-impaired will eventually find some way to evolve. I personally propose some sort of mandatory education concerning surfing practice and what exactly that big box that makes “clickity” noises really does. Perhaps then people will be a little more mature when their mouse disappears.

On the other hand, the governments of the world are frantically running around trying to save face. Reason? They don’t want to be left behind. They know as well as we do that there are plenty more problems where the “Y2K Bug” came from. They are the ones that are going to be in charge of mediating the situations as they arise.

Time to panic?

Not yet. Wait until 2028 when the seven-bit date blows[2^7=128].

Until then have a happy 19100.