Journalist vs. the Syrian Electronic Army 43
New submitter Drunkulus writes "Journalist Ira Winkler has an article about his personal run-in with the Syrian Electronic Army. While admitting that the SEA has succeeded in hijacking the Wall Street Journal's Twitter accounts and defacing the RSA conference website, he calls them immature, inept script kiddies in this Computerworld column. Quoting: 'These people purport to be servants of the genocidal dictator of Syria and came together to support him, but they wasted their hack on what amounted to cyberbullying. This is not behavior that the SEA's Syrian intelligence handlers would condone. The SEA wasted an opportunity to promote its message, while divulging previously unknown attack vectors. ... I don't think that sort of immaturity will go over well with the SEA's Syrian intelligence bosses. And that could have implications for the influence of the group in the future.'"
Amateur? SKiddie? Takes one to know one... (Score:5, Insightful)
Ira Winkler is a journalist now? That seems odd to me. Attrition.org has an excellent summary of all the different smells of bullshit that emanate from this guy. [attrition.org] He also got thrown out of Microsoft after conning them into hiring him to teach a class on application security where he literally used little dinosaur figures to try and teach the class. He was feckless...and this was *before* Microsoft got as good at security as they are now, before they developed their own SDLC, etc.
Assad (Score:4, Insightful)
I am rapidly coming to the conclusion that he may be bad, but the alternatives are far worse. In most countries it seems the Arab Spring has had little beneficial effect in terms of Freeeeedom!
GENOCIDAL? (Score:3, Insightful)
Assad is a strong-man, indeed, but he protects a multi-ethnic, woman-empowering and minority enabling nation-state. Secular modernists, Christians, Druze, Alawi, Sunni and Shia, along with unusual proto-Islamic and pre-Christian minorities are treated equally as Syrian.
The armed, "Syrian" opposition, that seeks to topple him? Not so much. These are the Wahabbist fighters sponsored by US and Qatari dollars - who'd implement whippings and stonings for teaching girls to read. They are imports from all the world's disaffected - but particularly Saudis - where it is a state policy to send these dead-enders abroad on "holy mission" and deflect their rage from the Saudi state itself, which is the natural source of their deprivations and disenfranchisement.
Who's calling Assad "genocidal"? Winkler - a spook from the NSA. That's who. He is also NOT unaffiliated with that little regional country which seeks disruption and neutralization of its neighbors. It is a pity that he is allergic to Truth.