From: InfoSec News (alertsinfosecnews.org)
Date: Fri Apr 03 2009 - 07:16:16 CDT

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http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2009/04/01/conficker-scare-its-the-medias-fault/

By Ben Worthen
The Wall Street Journal
April 1, 2009

The Conficker postmortems are starting. The early word: Shoot the
messengers.

Conficker, in case you missed it, is the computer virus that many media
accounts said would be “damaging millions of computers on April Fool’s
Day” (CNN), and cause “millions of computers around the world could go
into meltdown” (The Sun).

Now that it’s pretty clear that April 1 is a non-event, members of the
self-appointed Conficker Cabal formed to stop the virus—and hype it
breathlessly along the way—are passing the buck.

“It’s really complicated and media outlets have a hard time
understanding it,” said Rick Wesson, chief executive of security company
Support Intelligence, Wednesday. He earlier called Conficker a “digital
Pearl Harbor.”

He has a point of course. Sensational stories sell. But every
sensational Conficker story we’ve seen also quotes a few security
experts making sensational claims.

[...]

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