The stupid fairy tales that the British tabloids ran about warchalking last week (warchalkers are criminals and terrorists!) have crossed the pond and made it into the Calgary Sun, in a piece that raises the silliness to new heights:
Taking that technique, a new breed of hobo, "cyber vagabonds" if you will, are using the same markings to steal company and government secrets…
The drive-by hacking phenomenon — dubbed "warchalking" because crooks who have succeeded mark buildings with a visible chalk sign to invite further attacks — was tested by an English newspaper that, within minutes and undetected, broke into the private network used by the Cabinet Office and MPs…
Security experts fear the techniques could be used by terrorists to wage electronic warfare on the government as the world braces for the first anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in the U.S…
Closer to home, cops believe it's only a matter of time before crooks try the technique in Calgary.
"It's only a matter of time before this is the method of choice for the hackers," Fulkerth said…
"If I was using a wireless network, I wouldn't use a name that would ID my building," he said. "I'd also move wireless hubs away from windows into the building."
Here's my letter to Mike D'Amour, the guy who wrote the piece (you might wanna drop him a letter yourself):
Man, do you ever have your facts wrong.
Warchalking is used by wireless enthusiasts to signal the presence of open "community" networks (that's why I've got a wachalk mark that I've drawn out front of my apartment here in San Francisco which has an open wireless network as a public-spirited community gesture) as well as outside of my office here in San Francisco.
Every in-the-wild warchalk mark I've ever seen or heard of was used to denote the existence of such a network. Matt Jones (BBC), Ben Hammersley (correspondant for the Guardian), Doc Searls (editor, Linux Journal) and the others who were involved in inventing warchalking did so for this explicit purpose and I daresay every warchalker has more in common with Matt, Ben and Doc (and me!) than they do with your imaginary, hysterical criminals…
I know that the London tabs reported on most of the material in your story as though it were factual, but they were making it up. Repeating these fairy tales does no one any good (and, moreover, misinforms your readers).
(Thanks, Scott!
