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Computer Virus Fells Russian Stock Exchange
azav wrote to mention the New Scientist story detailing the computer virus that brought down the Russian Stock Exchange. From the article: "As the world waited for one computer virus to strike on Friday, another wriggled its way into the Russian stock exchange and knocked it offline. Computer experts had warned that 3 February could bring gloom for many as a computer virus called Nyxem was scheduled to start deleting files on machines it had infected."
we have a testing machine... connected to the internet of all things... AND connected to the same network the production system is running on... and evidently it's running on ms-windows...
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
This is ironic, as Russia has arguably some of the best computer security experts in the world. Those that know how to exploit the holes can also advise how to secure against threats. I wonder if it's due to talented Russians leaving the country to work abroad?
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I don't understand how all those large, important companies dare to run their systems on Windows if they need to keep them online 24/7.
the CIA, backed by President Ronald Reagan, aimed to bring down the Russian economy with dodgy software.
too.. many.. jokes...
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
Actually, it's an intentional change. A washington post article posted on /. a few hours ago explains:
[The choice of the name Blackworm] runs counter to the naming conventions of the anti-virus community, which generally goes out of its way to bastardize the name it thinks the virus or worm author would like its creation to have. (For example, "Nyxem" was derived by transposing the letters "m" and "x" in "Nymex," which is the common shorthand term for the New York Mercantile Exchange, the worm's original target.)
Of course, Russian mafia boss who lost money today might say just the same thing. Send Viktor and Grigori to say hello to the Microsoft board.
When these decisions are being made, you may feel as though you're stuck in a slow-motion sequence in a horror film, leaping to save someone, someone very beautiful that you could care about deeply if only you knew them a little better, someone who doesn't deserve to be eaten alive by a vicious monster, or maybe they do, but you just don't know it, anyway you don't know it and you didn't thnk of that until later, much later, after years of therapy in fact, all the while, leaping in futile slow motion to save a fatefully doomed monster victim, certain of their inevitable doom, crying "Nooooooo!" at the top of your lungs to no avail, due to the slow-motion and your voice having been run through an under-water pitch-reducing distortion filter. Yet another heroine devoured by the monster, just out of arms reach... You think to yourself, "If only... If only... If only I hadn't been stuck on slow motion..." when suddenly realize you're not alone, and you're thinking out loud, reliving the nightmare.
At this point a friend interrupts your navel gazing to say, "The monster would have eaten you too. Don't feel so guilty." whereas the cliche movie therapist would say, "How does that make you feel?" If you hear the former response, you're probably in meatspace, the latter, and you're still either dreaming or you really are a character in a horror film, and the monster is about to come crashing up through the floor or in through the window and eat your therapist.
Windows systems can be found:
Although it might be true that no rational and informed person would set up such critical systems on a system with the stability and security track record of Windows, remember that such decisions are typically made by a bureaucracy, not by rational and informed individuals. The field of psychology has studied this phenomenon and call it "groupthink".
Groupthink
Wikipedia on Groupthink
A First Look at Communication Theory (Ch. 18, 3rd Edition)
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
The reason not to have Windows in charge would security related. However, even there one could argue that if set up properly that concern would be obviated. Nonetheless, the tardy response that characterizes Microsoft too aptly (other than in rhetoric) and cost would be the reasons not to use their option.
Windows has improved, so much so that the first time I used Windows NT 4 on assignment I did not reboot the machine, because there were no machine lockups. I last saw a blue screen of death on a network back when Windows was at best an environment: Win 3.x. It was only later when my results sets returned radically altered, without seeing any reason in my query code changes, taught me that Windows had developed a more subtle failure mode. Thereafter, reboots every week whether needed or not.
One last point: no where in the article could I find what OS was actually being used. Are you presuming it was Windows or did you see some text I missed?