I enjoyed reading a recent article in the Sydney Morning Herald called New victim in India-Pakistan ‘cyberwar’.

The title does not really fit the body of the text. Here is a complete smack-down of the threat of cyberwar, for example:

“They hack through any number of sites every year. It’s just a bunch of kids who have got nothing better to do,” said Sahni, the executive director of the Institute for Conflict Management in New Delhi.

“The more serious threat is not this kind of childish prank but Pakistan’s use of net-based communication for actual terrorist operations,” he told AFP.

There is no juicy anecdote or data given at this point, just a reference to an old incident with India’s Oil and Natural Gas website. Actual terrorist operations sound serious but evidence of any such threat is missing.This is important to keep in mind when the article next turns to a self-described “evangelist” that dismisses the threat entirely:

Indians place little or no value on the kind of data individuals and organisations in many countries prefer to keep confidential, like passport and bank account details or work contracts, he said.

“Privacy is a concept not rooted in India culture. I don’t think we can change that and I don’t think it’s going to change in my lifetime,” said Mukhi.

“The government doesn’t care” about protecting information online, he said. “Corporates for some reason just don’t want to spend the money. They don’t think it happens often…. Web security is a low priority.

Thus the story boils down to a group in Pakistan issuing threats and warning how intent they are on starting a cyberwar with India by defacing websites, while India does not seem to put a high value on protecting their sites from defacement. It comes across like a fairy-tale wolf saying “I’ll huff and I’ll puff” as the pigs say “nothing like a good breeze to stay cool”.