Oz infosec spooks: ease back on the “cybers”, this is serious

For example, not-China* didn't “hack the BoM's supercomputers”

 
12 Oct 2016 at 02:03, Richard Chirgwin                                             

 Sensationalist language is making it hard to educate businesses and the public about infosec risks*, according to the Australian Cyber Security Centre's 2016 threat report.
 
While every ICMP ping is treated as an attack by some, the report says unequivocally: “Australia still has not been subjected to malicious cyber activity that could constitute a cyber attack”.
 
Also, in the short term, terrorist organisations will stick to the attacks they know best: finding ill-secured business or government Websites, and defacing them.
 
After its formalities, glossary and housekeeping notes, the report opens with the complaint that the breadth of the term “cyber attack”, the proliferation of cybers (“cyber war”, “cyber terrorism” and “cyber weapons”) and sensationalism (leading to a “disproportionate sense of threat) “undermines the development and application of proportionate nation state responses“.
 
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