I had a call this morning asking me to go on the radio tomorrow morning. It was from BBC London and I'll be on at 7.20am UK time, thanks for asking - discussing this story about the
terrorist Cyberthreat to the 2012 Olympics.
The man suggesting there is such a threat is David Blunkett, formerly Home Secretary, which made him responsible for protecting the country - he was actually in the job on 11 September 2001 when the problem was of course tragically highlighted internationally. So he's not a lightweight.
The thing is, he's now issuing this warning about the Olympics and I can't find a single expert to back him up. There's no new information, no specific intelligence about cyberterrorists planning anything for 2012 (I'll bet they are of course, but I'll bet they're planning all sorts of things). Much less is there anything we can do to guess what technologies and programs they'll be using by that date.
Call me a cynic but he's making this speech of warning tomorrow. That's tomorrow the opening day of the Infosec show in the UK. So he needed a subject. And he's chosen to speculate about something three years from now.
I really hate to say it about someone who's held such a serious position at such an extreme time in the past. But this looks a lot like one of those 'pad it out, make it sound plausible and pocket the fee' speeches to me.
