Iran accused CNN of banding together with the rest of their global news brothers in a (shall we say) coalition of the willing. Their sole purpose? To defeat Iran in a “cyber war.”

Believe it: a “cyber war.” So screams Foreign Ministry spokesman Hassan Qashqavi.

To hear Qashqavi say it, CNN kills Iranians with website updates … and tortures Iranians with holographic on-scene reporters … and maims Iranians with near-realtime video. I can’t wait for Qashqavi to show us footage of sand dunes littered with damaged PCs and smouldering mousepads, screaming “CNN did this!”

Iran’s Foreign Mini­stry spokes­man chea­pened the memory of 100,000 Iranians who perished in chem­i­cal wea­pons attacks during his country’s latest real war.

CNN actually responded to Iran’s charges. In a formal statement issued by… by… well, I can’t seem to get the video to load at CNN.com. No doubt Iran is already striking back at Ted Turner’s alma mater with every cyber weapon in their vast arsenal.

So anyway. CNN punctuated their official response with strong words like “balderdash” and “poppycock” and “conficker.” The 24/7 news organization proclaimed “we haven’t put Robin Meade in a military uniform since her last USO tour.” When the world’s leading cable news—

—oh, bah humbug. I’m done with the humor in this column. Let’s get serious, folks.

Do you realize what Foreign Ministry spokesman Hassan Qashqavi did here? He cheapened the memory of 100,000 Iranians who perished in chemical weapons attacks during his country’s latest real war. Shame on him!

Qashqavi raised an issue I’ve complained about for many, many years. I quote myself from a column published before the 2001 U.S. terror attack where I railed against the trivialization of the word “terrorism”:

My standard philosophical question [is this]: “if this is what you call ‘cyber-terrorism,’ what word will you cheapen when something worse comes along?” Cyber-holocaust? Cyber-genocide? Cyber-what? What, indeed. We can’t combat cyber-terrorism until we combat the hysteria surrounding it.

Vmyths columnist Lew Koch asked the same question just two months before the 2001 terror attack. On the cheapening of diplomatically charged words: “Shouldn’t a group at least have to kill somebody before being labeled a terrorist organization?”

If you believe CNN launched a cyber-war against Iran, then you also believe Vmyths is a tool of the CIA — and I would urge you to increase your thorazine injections.

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You know what a real war is? A real war is when political cartoonists draw thought-provoking images after wiping away tears of remorse at the senseless loss of life on both sides of the battlefield.

You know what a cyber war is? A cyber war is when political cartoonists draw spoofs of Foreign Ministry spokesman Hassan Qashqavi after wiping away tears of laughter at the senseless stupidity of his remarks…

My original notion for this column centered on the media hysteria I expected from F-Secure’s huffing over variants of the Downadup worm. Quoting from a (level-headed) story in The Register:

[The Downadup worm] that attacks a patched vulnerability in Microsoft Windows, is making exponential gains if estimates from researchers at F-Secure are accurate. They show 6.5 million new infections in the past four days, bringing the total number of machines it has compromised to almost 9 million. The astronomical growth stunned some researchers, although others cautioned the numbers could be inflated since the counting of infected computers is by no means an exact science. Most agreed F-Secure’s estimate was certainly plausible and if it proved to be correct, represented a major development in the world of cyberthreats.

6.5 million newly infected PCs, you say? All of them whacked in a four-day period? Hmmm. The timing of this makes me wonder how many of those PCs showed up under the plastic tannenbaum.

Yet it would seem my worries about hysteria have died on the vine. Consider the following:

The media yawned when F-Secure claimed the Downadup worm tallied another 6.5 million PCs in a four-day period…

• The SANS Internet Storm Center continued to display a “green” Internet threat level;
• Symantec continued to hold at “ThreatCon 2” with no mention of the Downadup worm;
• McAfee didn’t even mention it in a “breaking advisory”;
• ISS maintained an “AlertCon 1” with no mention of the Downadup worm;
• Sophos technovangelist Graham Cluley raised little more than an eyebrow in his corporate blog; and
• About.com antivirus guide Mary Landesman devoted only two paragraphs in her blog.

Only Kaspersky Labs seems to have given F-Secure some shrift when they announced a virus alert on their website. Yet they only identified it as a moderate risk. So, uh … let’s call it “short shrift” and leave it at that.

The media, too, seems to have collectively yawned over F-Secure’s declaration. One CNN Headline News anchor — dare I say it? — almost smirked while reading from the teleprompter. (In all fairness, it isn’t the first time a CNN mannequin has smirked or spoken in an upbeat tone about a devastating computer virus attack.)

This non-media circus reminds me yet again of Aesop’s fable of the boy who cried wolf. F-Secure, on the other hand, will doubtless call up the Cassandra fable to dismiss any accusations of wolf-crying.

One quote in The Register‘s story leapt out at me for its irony:

“This thing has gotten way out of hand,” said Paul Ferguson, a security researcher for anti-virus provider Trend Micro who has spent the past several weeks tracking the worm’s progress. “It seems pretty spectacular to me that there could be that much growth.”

I dismiss Ferguson’s quote as ironic because Trend Micro’s “vinfo” page hasn’t declared a medium- or high-risk alert. How can we take him at face value when his company doesn’t even wail about it on an alert page?

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Antivirus vendors and computer news reporters have certainly suffered a drought of hysteria in the past few years — and I myself fret that we’re due for another hystericane.

F-Secure will doubtless call up the Cassandra fable to dismiss any accusations of wolf-crying…

Why, then, hasn’t the Downadup worm generated “the perfect storm” of media hysteria?

The answer may lie in an amazing buildup to America’s “double major holiday.” Yesterday was Martin Luther King Jr. Day while today sees the inauguration of Barack Obama. News organizations appear highly focused on the orgasm of festivities in Washington, DC—

—and the media’s infatuation with U.S. politics may have simply overshadowed everything else of importance.

“You sound a bit facetious, Rob.” Yeah, okay: you caught me. Longtime readers will recall the fact government experts reminisce about the Nimda worm as a global catastrophe that cost billions of dollars and that would have qualified as one of the worst acts of cyber-terrorism ever caught on tape. And those experts still bemoan the fact it didn’t get much airplay … because it came just one week after the equally devastating physical terrorism of 9/11/01.

First Nimda; now Downadup. This leads me to ask a philosophical question. “Why do the world’s most devastating computer security attacks always seem to take place when reporters are too preoccupied to give it the attention it truly deserves?”