Truth About Computer Security Hysteria

Cyber-terrorists tried to kill Thailand's finance minister!

FEW OF US own a MegaCar with a built-in network server — but almost everyone owns a car with onboard computers and supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) equipment.

The SCADA equip­ment in your car threatens your life and the lives of every­one around you. Every school­boy knows this. Look at the photo below if you don't be­lieve me!

Onboard computers use SCADA equipment to control all sorts of things in your vehicle. For example, an oxygen sensor acquires data about your fuel efficiency and it relays this data to a supervisory control device that constantly adjusts your fuel intake. Another sensor can detect a child in the front seat (which is a no-no) and can adjust the force of the passenger air bag. Other devices sense if your car crashes or flips over, and they trigger an onboard computer to dial an emergency number. Another device acquires data from military satellites and relays it to an onboard computer that can direct an ambulance to your underwater tomb.

Internal & external temperature sensors help to control the air conditioning in your vehicle. Even a tire pressure device can tell the onboard computers when you can no longer drive safely. Yes, today's automobiles brim with SCADA equipment.

Every schoolboy knows a SCADA system is dangerous. Very dangerous. Every schoolboy knows an impoverished mediocre 14yr-old Iraqi nomad with a laptop can break into any SCADA equipment anywhere in the world. Every schoolboy knows an impoverished mediocre 14yr-old Iraqi nomad can destroy a dam, or take out a major chunk of the U.S. power grid, or over-fluoridate & under-chlorinate our precious toilet water, in "less than two minutes." All because of SCADA.

The SCADA equipment in your car threatens your life and the lives of everyone around you. Every schoolboy knows this. I cannot stress it enough.

So! You may have heard of a supposedly amusing story about Thailand's finance minister, who recently found himself trapped in his own limousine when all of its onboard computers supposedly conked out. According to a Reuters newswire, "Suchart Jaovisidha and his driver were trapped inside the BMW for more than 10 minutes before guards broke a window. All doors and windows had locked automatically when the computer crashed, and the air-conditioning stopped, officials said. 'We could hardly breathe for over 10 minutes,' Suchart told reporters... 'It was a harrowing experience.' "

Harrowing, indeed. Vmyths can assure you the car's onboard computers didn't just crash — they were infected by cyber-terrorists who tried to asphyxiate the finance minister in his limousine-turned-prison!

How can Vmyths so brazenly assure you of this? Well, as you know, I secretly work for the CIA and I was on duty when the minister's limousine was hacked. It took eight nail-biting minutes to obtain permission to save the minister's life — and then, of course, we hacked the limousine's SCADA equipment in less than two minutes.

But by then the minister's minions broke a window, and no one thought to check the door handles one last time as the victims wriggled out of their suffocating sedan.

I VERY NEARLY paid a heavy price for foiling the assassination plot. The cyber-terrorists used a diabolical "hackback" to identify my team's secret location. Then they tried to hack into the SCADA equipment of my own minivan in order to kill me!

Thankfully, I long ago clipped an Internet firewall onto my engine compartment firewall. It repelled the cyber-attack.

But the dastardly digital demons wouldn't give up. They attacked the van sitting right next to mine in an effort to kill me by proxy! First they hacked into the other van's oxygen sensor. Then they reprogrammed the carburetor to flood the engine compartment with deadly fumes. Then they triggered the cigarette lighter and all of the spark plugs, causing the inferno you see here:

You can plainly see two firemen standing behind my minivan. I might be dead right now if I hadn't clipped an Internet firewall onto my engine compartment firewall. So let this be a lesson to you: Internet firewalls save lives. Ask Thailand's finance minister if you don't believe me.

This event undeniably proves roadways around the world brim with death-traps that are unsafe at any modem speed. I call on Ralph Nader to join Vmyths in a crusade to recall every SCADA-equipped automobile in the U.S. so we can retrofit them with a government-approved Internet firewall.

I know it'll cost a fortune to equip a quarter-billion vehicles with yet another passenger security device. But if it saves even one life, then it'll all be worth it...