Writing in his weekend security blog, Harley said that in the months since Stuxnet first hit our radar, he has wiped a lot of brickdust off his forehead.
"Mostly as a result of banging my head against the wall in the hope of distraction from yet another infuriating, unsubstantiated speculation about who wrote it, what it was for, and who was the target, repeated as if it was proven fact", he said.
"Yesterday, Sky News, tired of mere factual reporting and even half-informed speculation, took off for planet Fantasy, where it discovered that the Sky really is falling", he added.
According to Harley, the hook on the "sorry dishrag" of a story is that Stuxnet is being traded on the black market and could therefore be used by terrorists.
So which market, he asked, is the black market?
"Probably Billingsgate, since this story seems to have attracted more than its fair share of red herrings and fisherman's tales", he said, adding that - despite the Sky News' report - he does not think that Stuxnet has much market value.
In particular, Harley seems to take exception to the report that Stuxnet could be used to "shut down power stations... and you could shut down the transport network across the United Kingdom."
Ah yes, he said, I saw that movie. Michael Caine robbing a bank in Turin by messing with the traffic lights. "They use high-speed frequency converter drives for traffic control too, do they? Well, I never."
Infosecurity notes that Paul Ducklin, Sophos' head of technology for Asia-Pacific, is similarly less than enthused by the mainstream media's reporting on the Stuxnet malware.
As well as the Sky News video, about which he said that the industry does need yet more speculation about Stuxnet when we already face a determined and extensive enemy in the form of cybercriminals.
"They are routinely stealing our credentials, plundering our bank accounts, raiding our retirement funds, subverting our payment systems and even - as one poor fellow in Western Australia found out recently - selling our houses from under our feet", he said in his security blog.
The problem with inaccurate, inflammatory and irresponsible stories about Stuxnet - good though they may be for page impressions and video views - says Ducklin, is that they make cybercriminality sound like a second-rate problem when it is positioned against a news backdrop alleging cyberwar.
"Yet it is the sort of rampant and general cybercriminality I mention above which is, in my opinion, significantly more likely to undermine the economic stability of, and thus the quality of life in, many developed countries", he said in his security blog.
"Let's stop being frightened of shadows and actually concentrate on getting rid of the cyberenemy already in our midst", he added.