February's top-10 cyber privateer blogs

Going into Presidents Day Weekend (I'm sure there's a politically appropriate message here), you might be interested in the most-read cyber privateering blogs for the last month. The mathematician in me loves to analyze trend data, and the guerrilla warrior in me wants to know where I've drawn the most blood. While I'm not at all surprised by the results, the hairs on the back of my neck do stand up a bit at the mathematical likelihood that (a) we are in the midst of a rapidly escalating cyber war, and (b) none of our leaders have the slightest clue what to do about it. Here are my top-10 most-read blogs for the last month:

1. How China/Russia can make (are making?) billions by slowing down the side channel. No surprise here, given the publicity over the last month on hiccups and hacks in international financial systems. Sure, I poured a little cyber privateer gasoline on the fire with my online comments to the Wall Street Journal and London Telegraph articles. This topic had nearly double the readers of topic #2.
2. China, I wouldn't even take a FREE Huawei cell phone or tablet. While this topic had only half the readers of #1, it nearly doubled the readership of #3 that follows. Yeah, again I drew a fairly unambiguous line in the sand. I also baited the Hounds of Hell in my comments to WSJ and Telegraph articles.
3. Privateer analytics: high-reward/high-risk numbers. This is a bit of a surprise, although combined with #s 4 and 5 makes perfect sense. The first two indicate the "pain level" of the world, while #s 3, 4, and 5 indicated that readers are taking a good hard look at my proposal to legalize cyber privateering.
4. Cyber privateer code: 100-to-1 restitution. This is the "got'cha" for the inept privateer. Screw up even once, and you could be off the financial grid for the rest of your life.
5. Draft 01: The Cyber Privateer Code. This is my equivalent to Asimov's Rules of Robotics. I proposed these five rules of cyber privateering on November 13, 2010. Surprisingly, I haven't felt to need to modify them. Yet.
6. Russia doesn't jail young Darth Vader. I couldn't resist the analogy of the "evil empire" letting off a guy named…Anikin (pretty close to Anakin Skywalker). Again, this indicts Russia pretty thoroughly as a purveyor of cyber shenanigans.
7. The Perfect Virus: All 22 principles summarized. Once we get past current events and the mechanics of cyber privateering, it's logical that the toolset for the efficient swashbuckler should come into play. This is one of two intellectual tours de force to which I can claim authorship credit (the other is #8 below). The inspiration came from Jeffrey L. Walker, the member of my Cyber Privateer Fantasy League team who wrote a monograph on "The Perfect Application" and on which I built my own treatise on The Perfect Virus.
8. How to recruit cyber privateers: Dear Sony Entertainment. My second intellectual tour de force is the idea that online gaming is a perfect way to identify people ideally suited to be cyber privateers. Naturally, once people are hooked on the viability of cyber privateering and on the technology necessary to pull it off, they inevitably become curious as to how they might build an organization. Well, here you go.
9. Stuxnet about to cause an "Iranian Chernobyl." The Russian warning got some serious international news coverage, and the Telegraph story was well reserched. My online comments caused a flurry of interest in cyber privateering.
10. Infecting an alien architecture, Part IV. Last but certainly not least is my four-part discussion of what I call "The Holy Grail" of The Perfect Virus, principle #7, Black Box Portability. Putting this point #10 into context, the all-time most popular document in my blog, not just this month but for all time, is principle #14, Stealth. But over the last month, I'm glad to see my readers are putting Stealth into context, and realize that the biggest threat to our cyber world is most likely a proprietary and alien architecture that China is probably developing as its ultimate cyber weapon. If we can't infect and neutralize that technology, then we will have lost The Great Cyber War.

So welcome to Presidents Day. There is a whole lot for presidents—of corporations and of coutries—to be considering this weekend.