Calling Tom Simondi “a longtime reader” is like calling the Pope “a longtime Catholic.” He’s been relishing my rants since the late 1980s. (Simondi, I mean.) So anyway, Simondi writes with cute news about a recent “AusCERT” (Australian Computer Emergency Response Team) Conference. Seems one of the vendors accidentally distributed — you guessed it — an infected media presentation. Follow [this link] for the story. Google for “AusCERT Telstra” and you’ll find any number of other stories.

Longtime readers might notice an old trend in the media’s coverage of this snafu. Namely: the damage was “limited.” If this happened at, say, a medical conference, the quoted computer security experts would tend to describe it in more cataclysmic terms. But when those same experts get whacked at a computer security trade show, well, it’s really just an embarrassment. In other words: “it’s bad except when it happens to me.”

Which reminds me. Read the seminal book “Mistakes Were Made (But Not By Me)” to understand how & why so many computer security experts can say bizarre things with a perfectly straight face.