Speaking at the Black Hat hacker’s conference in Vegas yesterday, former director of the CIA’s counterterrorism center Cofer Black voiced concerns about a future “code war” where hackers tamper with the technology that runs our day-to-day interactions. Then a fire alarm accidentally tripped, which was nice and thematic.

Black, speaking to an audience of about 6,500 other tech types, was at pains to sketch a pretty grim picture of the years to come; “Cold war, global war on terrorism and now you have the code war — which is your war.” He went on to reference last year’s Stuxnet worm, which some think was designed to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities – and to insist that a nation state had to be involved in the worm’s production.

Black went on to remind people that he’d sort-of-warned the US Government about a 9/11-style attack about a month before it happened, and that his Black Hat talk could prove similarly prophetic.

Just a heads up:  Black is currently chairman of Total Intelligence Solutions, the kinds of folk who make money out of other people being terrified at the thought of, oh, I don’t know, a vaguely-defined cyber-war.

Hack the planet.

[CNN]