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Greek Hackers Target CERN's LHC
Doomsayers Delight writes "The Telegraph reports that Greek hackers were able to gain momentary access to a CERN computer system of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) while the first particles were zipping around the particle accelerator on September 10th. 'Scientists working at CERN, the organization that runs the vast smasher, were worried about what the hackers could do because they were "one step away" from the computer control system of one of the huge detectors of the machine, a vast magnet that weighs 12,500 tons, measuring around 21 meters in length and 15 meters wide/high. If they had hacked into a second computer network, they could have turned off parts of the vast detector and, said the insider, "it is hard enough to make these things work if no one is messing with it."'"
Seems like a separate network and portable harddrives to move the data would have been a pretty obvious thing to do.
Then again, I've worked with academic types, and not all of them are reasonable about the slightest perception of inconvenience.
Why don't these wonderful human beings hack into nuclear power plants while they're at it. I'm sure that would result in some excellent "Saving the Planet" effects.
If you hadn't replied already, I would have said exactly the same thing. It shouldn't even have an IP address on a network connected to the wide world. Computers not attached to networks cannot be hacked into remotely. Also, they should be running a secure operating system, such as BSD. Linux probably wouldn't even do the trick for something as critical as this.
I stand corrected. What I should have said is a more secure operating system. BSD seems to allow for stupider users and still retain some security. But still, it shouldn't be on a network with public or even encrypted wireless access. Computers that must be physically accessed in order to be compromised are the most secure computers.
Meh. You offer nothing challenging.