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."'"

Comments

Why is that even possible?

[Reality Master 201]

Why can anyone get to the control systems for a piece of equipment like that from the internet?

Re:Why is that even possible?

[Anonymous Coward]

security updates?

Re:Why is that even possible?

[n dot l]

My understanding is they have the LHC linked to universities/research firms/supercomputers all over Europe simply in order to process the massive amount of data that thing generates. I might have read that wrong though. I've had nothing but trouble finding good information between the "BLACK HOLES, WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE!", the idiot reporters doing "human interest" style pieces about it, and the incomprehensible (to me) physics-babble.

Re:Why is that even possible?

[smittyoneeach]

Are you asking why admins exist?

Re:Why is that even possible?

[bothra]

even scientists need to d/l pr0n while they wait for particles to fly around that thing....

Re:Why is that even possible?

[sakdoctor]

Vista needs to phone home for activation.

Re:Why is that even possible?

[Bryansix]

Then they can create a one way data warehouse dump of the data on a daily basis. Nobody needs the data faster then that. It can also be done via sneeker net. IE: Send it to an external hard drive and then move the HD over to a comp connected to the net and upload the data.

Re:Why is that even possible?

[Rayeth]

Convenience is the root of most such problems. Would it be safer to not have such machines connected to the internet? Sure, but it would be damn inconvenient if the scientists couldn't get to their Email.

Re:Why is that even possible?

[NastyNate]

Couldn't you use a sneakernet link to the outside world instead?

Re:Why is that even possible?

[Directrix1]

This is from telegraph.co.uk . It might as well be the National Enquirer, and placed up there with Aliens that impregnated Britney Spears. I wish slashdot had a bury button.

Re:Why is that even possible?

[Darkness404]

Ummm... Its impossible for someone outside of physical access to hack a system if it isn't connected to the internet.

Re:Why is that even possible?

[Bogtha]

Yeah, right, as if the LHC has enough horsepower to run Vista!

Re:Why is that even possible?

[KezMaefele]

http://lhcathome.cern.ch/

Re:Why is that even possible?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hard to sneaker-net data to a > 1000 machine grid.

This system is a bit larger scale than you suspect.

Re:Why is that even possible?

[alex4u2nv]

Wonder how they broke in? Through the backdoor of course.

In other words: The Large Hadron Collider was Greeked

Re:Why is that even possible?

[aliquis]

Make that "not connected to any network and they don't have physical access."

Grand parent: Probably so scientist at other locations can run and investigate the results and so on of their experiments on said equipment?

Sure they could like send a request to get something made and later returned the results but I guess for some tasks it's easier to control the equipment, see what's going on and change some parameters and so on yourself than having to ask someone else the whole time.

Sure if everyone had their own LHC this wouldn't be needed, but now I assume there is more users than there is LHCs ..

Re:Why is that even possible?

[X0563511]

I know you are being funny, but CERN uses Scientific Linux.

SL is a Linux release put together by Fermilab, CERN, and various other labs and universities around the world. Its primary purpose is to reduce duplicated effort of the labs, and to have a common install base for the various experimenters.

Re:Why is that even possible?

[VJ42]

It's called "the grid". just do a google search for "LHC grid" and you'll get lots of info. Here's a couple of links for starers:
http://lcg.web.cern.ch/LCG/
http://www.gridpp.ac.uk/cernlcg.html

The BBC has a less tchnical piece on te grid: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7534866.stm

Re:Why is that even possible?

[aliquis]

.. not to forget spore, or do you only want to play for a week?

Oh wait, a week is enough, sorry.

Re:Why is that even possible?

[aliquis]

Yeah because they have to read their e-mails on the console of the LHC!! Only computer they have in the building!

Re:Why is that even possible?

[Anonymous Coward]

They expect to generate something like 27 Terabytes of data every day. All those ones and zeros weigh a ton!

Re:Why is that even possible?

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder if this has anything to do with the horror stories I was reading yesterday (on slashdot) about how badly the scientists treat the admins.

Given my personal experience in the IT world, it seems very plausable to me that the scientists were demanding crazy levels of Internet access for the whole system and vehemently rejecting the security concerns the admins may have voiced as being just more needless whining and obstruction from insignificant low-level functionaries.

So they are too important to let the admins do their jobs...causing stuff like this to happen...and when it happens they blame the admins.

Re:Why is that even possible?

[AlXtreme]

My understanding is they have the LHC linked to universities/research firms/supercomputers all over Europe simply in order to process the massive amount of data that thing generates.

You're correct (I did an internship recently on data management with the LCG/EGEE network). It's a massive multi-tiered network of datacenters (something like 50k nodes, 15PB of dedicated data storage, but don't quote me on these figures), all required to distribute the enormous amounts of data collected in the experiments to the researchers capable of processing the data.

I'm not going to be an ass and piss too much on the work of thousands of others, because it took quite a bit of effort to set this up, but them getting hacked doesn't really surprise me. The architecture they set up (even for only data-distribution) is very complex, and a lot of software they use has been written in-house or has been forked (years ago). Oh, and it's all open source, readily available for whoever looks for it. With the LHC being such a high-profile target, this is IMHO a security nightmare waiting to happen.

In what I've seen, I'm crossing my fingers that this break-in isn't related to the grid network, and that the next few months will go smoothly, but the grid has been primarily designed for high throughput, not security. Sure, they have certificates you need to access the grid systems, the policies are there, but technically I have my doubts.

Re:Why is that even possible?

[NotBornYesterday]

You got to it before I could, but you failed to use "Hardon Collider" in the most relevant metaphor I've yet seen.

Re:Why is that even possible?

[$RANDOMLUSER]

They expect to generate something like 27 Terabytes of data every day. All those ones and zeros weigh a ton!

No, the zeros don't weight anything.

Re:Why is that even possible?

[jythie]

I am guessing that the control computers are also the ones that store/process the data coming out of the detector.
 
Such data usually needs to be stored to some kind of network device and then needs to be network accessable to people who want to actually cook the stuff.

Re:Why is that even possible?

[terrabit]

They can't get to the control system. CMSMON was a machine that collected and served meta data about the detector. The hackers couldn't reach the control system.

Re:Why is that even possible?

[Otter]

Discussion at KDE News. They seem to have Windows mixed in with the Linux, although there's disagreement among various people claiming inside knowledge as to what's where.

Re:Why is that even possible?

[smolloy]

These things are internet connected in order to allow on-call technicians and facilities management to check/fix it remotely. All big machines work like this. Everyone claiming that it shouldn't be connected to the internet has never worked with a machine like this (PS: I have).

Seriously, we need to stop the hysteria over this. It's not like you're presented with a "destroy the world" button when you log in!

No, you'll land at a bash prompt. And then what? You won't know the commands necessary to get to the control system software, and, even if you did, you'd only be able to randomly tinker with magnets. This will either have no effect whatsoever, or will be prevented by the machine protection system.

The worst you can do is to interrupt operation for a while while they kick you out, and restore any changes you made (which would be easily done from automatic history software).

This is bad -- any crack like this is bad -- but it's not gonna cause black holes, it's not gonna release radioactivity, and it's not gonna break the machine.

People need to calm down.

Re:Why is that even possible?

[Anonymous Coward]

Big Bang is trying to access your system.

Confirm or Deny?

Re:Why is that even possible?

[Firehed]

No kidding. I'm pretty sure some /. post yesterday pegged it at something like 2.5PB/yr*, or almost 7TB/day. Your sneakernet would be more like a forkliftnet. An interesting sight to say the least, but logistically retarded.

*I'm running on about 2 hours of sleep, so I could be way off the mark there.

Re:Why is that even possible?

[terrabit]

This is basically how the system is setup. Meta data about detector runs are sent from the online systems to CMSMON. CMSMON is accessible to the outside world so CMS collaborators can look at the data the detector has been collecting.

Re:Why is that even possible?

[sesshomaru]

"Let us cavort like the Greeks of old. You know the ones I mean." --Hedonism-bot

Re:Why is that even possible?

[nurb432]

Get a bunch of theoretical physicists together and security is the last thing on their minds.

Re:Why is that even possible?

[ari wins]

I know I'm just nitpiking here, but have you SEEN Britney's kids? How can you possibly doubt their alien ancestry?

Re:Why is that even possible?

[VJ42]

The BBC has it at 15PB/yr. As it says, that's 100GB every four minutes. Sneakernet wouldn't need a forklift, but a truck.

Re:Why is that even possible?

[Dekker3D]

downloading pr0n at speeds measured in gigabits/second. man, they wouldn't even take the time to look at the data they're supposed to be processing. did they get some sort of "special arrangement" with their employers?

this reeks of... no, let's not even start going into what it smells like. "fishy" doesn't even come close!

Re:Why is that even possible?

[devman]

They (scientificlinux.org) are using an unsigned SSL certificate, is there anyway for me to verify the thumbprint for that cert out of band? Can someone post it if they've verified it?

Re:Why is that even possible?

[jd]

Open Source should have meant that a few thousand eyeballs scoured that code over the years between being written and being used. However, those few thousand eyeballs can't see code that nobody is told about. I discovered the source to the various projects by scouring CERN's network and digging deep through nests of links and obscure references. The Yahoo group for discussing grid computing has barely been used in the past year, and none of it for this. If there are any records for these projects on Freshmeat, it's because I added them. The project summaries are vague, where they're given at all. This simply isn't an acceptable way of distributing information. Their brief notices on minor pages away from the real information are about as useful as a house demolition order being posted in a basement with no stairs or lights.

Re:Why is that even possible?

[Jedi_Master_SS]

Not a truck. A series of tubes

Re:Why is that even possible?

[mattfata]

No one said the data collection server had to be off-net. The control system should most definitely not be. Control and data distribution should just be on separate machines.

Re:Why is that even possible?

[GoodNicksAreTaken]

This simply isn't an acceptable way of distributing information. Their brief notices on minor pages away from the real information are about as useful as a house demolition order being posted in a basement with no stairs or lights.

It was on display on the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying 'Beware of the Leopard.'

Re:Why is that even possible?

[threat_or_menace]

It must be possible in order that I can turn the power of the beams up past 11 - to twelve if need be - in order to spawn my world-consuming black hole.

All that silliness about massive datasets processed in lots of complicated networky ways? Merely a cover.

Oh, and the other thing is that before I learn enough about hadrons (jeeze, the textbooks are fuckin' HARD to follow) to make the blackhole thing work?

It's a great place to store my pr0n.

Re:Why is that even possible?

[aliquis]

I thought you didn't used are about things, stupid english :D

Re:Why is that even possible?

[bhtooefr]

Have it dump to tape, sneakernet the tapes to another machine 5 feet away, that [b]is[/b] Internet connected.

Re:Why is that even possible?

[devman]

Why bother even using a certificate then?

Re:Why is that even possible?

[KGIII]

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.

There is no such thing as a secure operating system. There are just people with security minded actions using a variety of operating systems. The only secure computer is one that no one can access, ever. Damned thing shouldn't even turn on if they want to be sure it is secure.

Re:Why is that even possible?

[dtml-try MyNick]

I can understand that somehow their datagrid is connected to the net in some way. It's hard these days to run a massive scale project and not connecting it to the outside world in one way or anothr.

What scares me is the fact that they pumped in aprox. 4.4 billion euros in this project and somehow with all that money it seems that they didn't invest enough in security.

I mean, come on. A breach is one thing but "one step away" from one of the core components is pretty serious.

Re:Why is that even possible?

[ignoramus]

From the site's page on computing: The Large Hadron Collider will produce roughly 15 petabytes (15 million gigabytes) of data annually - enough to fill more than 1.7 million dual-layer DVDs a year!

Those sneakers might need to be replaced pretty quick...

Re:Why is that even possible?

[MadnessASAP]

It's valid

Of course I could very well be the man trying to steal your info. Perhaps you should just access the site in a sandbox and don't give it any personal information if you're that concerned.

Re:Why is that even possible?

[Oktober Sunset]

It looks like your creating a black hole...

Re:Why is that even possible?

[Yvanhoe]

Well, the problem is that there may be a thousand eyeballs, there is only one LHC.

Re:Why is that even possible?

[lgw]

And the network of fibre-channel cable doesn't even need to be physically switched. Just change the VLAN or FC domain the port is on, to make it visible to a different set of servers.

Re:Why is that even possible?

[sexconker]

Networks are fine.

The damned thing being on the INTERNET is retarded.

Physically sever (or never connect) anything this important from the internet.

Re:Why is that even possible?

[Daimanta]

That's why they are busy trying to develop a zero based compression algorithm. If the number of 1s is bigger than the number of 0s, all bits are flipped.

To recover the original data, flip all bits again and you're set.

Re:Why is that even possible?

[bill_mcgonigle]

Why can anyone get to the control systems for a piece of equipment like that from the internet?

Sounds like they have network routers linking the systems. Bad.

TLA's use message passing bridges (e.g. XML) rather than network routers for that kind of work.

Yeah, it's harder.

Re:Why is that even possible?

[NotBorg]

Supersymmetry, Extra Dimensions and the Origin of Mass - 73 min
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3407710188844062148&hl=en

Somewhere about 30mins in it talks about the volume of data, bandwidth, tapes, etc. I recommend watching the whole video. There's a lot of interesting bits all throughout about data collection distribution and processing.

Yes, large scale indeed. :)

Off-topic side note: Python, C++, and Linux are mentioned as significant technologies.

Re:Why is that even possible?

[devman]

I'm not concerned, my point is if verification is not offered what's the point of even using the SSL cert, it's security theater.

Re:Why is that even possible?

[notnAP]

Actually, I believe the whole purpose of LHC was to determine if indeed there was mass in the zero's.

Re:Why is that even possible?

[kestasjk]

I've had nothing but trouble finding good information between the "BLACK HOLES, WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE!", the idiot reporters doing "human interest" style pieces about it, and the incomprehensible (to me) physics-babble.

I'm almost at the end of a physics BSc and we don't touch on sub-atomic (sub-nuclear) physics (I guess it's not yet practical enough), so the details are incomprehensible to the vast majority of people. You need to be a phd to stand a chance, which is a shame (especially for me). :-(

Re:Why is that even possible?

[MadnessASAP]

Prevents MITM attacks? Maybe you can't verify whoever is on the other end but assuming you trust the cert you can at least ensure that no one is spying on the data.

Re:Why is that even possible?

[vrmlguy]

A lot of replies discuss the amount of data being generated, but that's different from the control systems. I'd expect that the mechanisms for controlling the beams don't generate a lot of data that needs to be stored. Hopefully, the design uses (or permits the retrofit of) two distinct networks, a small and very secure one for control and a large and open one for the generated data. Financial, health care, and other institutions publish lots of data to their customers without allowing the outside world access to the operators. LHC should have been designed similarly.

Re:Why is that even possible?

[devman]

Yes, but as you said that's assuming the connection itself isn't to a MITM with a forged cert. I guess my ultimate point is self-signed should really only be used in controlled environments, we don't want the less aware users to get used to creating security exceptions for every public site that uses SSL thinking that is the norm. However I suppose we are way off-topic at this point so I will cede the point and wait for another SSL news story. :)

Re:Why is that even possible?

[quanticle]

Unfortunately, it's not always that simple. Sure, there may be a few universities that have secure leased lines running to CERN, but, given the prominence of the LHC, there are sure to be researchers not from those universities who want to run LHC experiments. Cutting off those researchers simply because they're at the wrong institution doesn't seem fair.

Re:Why is that even possible?

[mikiN]

Then they can create a one way data warehouse dump of the data on a daily basis.

Just have the LHC create some nice little black holes and dump the data into them. One way data warehouse, with absolutely perfect data security.

(sorry, couldn't resist...)

Re:Why is that even possible?

[jd]

I have the excuse I wrote part of the code for one of the LHC's predecessors. In this case, the grid software is very generic. ShibGrid doesn't care if it's securing a particle accelerator or a wide-area distributed MMORPG, but I bet you anything that if WoW was a part of the Grid Gaming consortium, ShibGrid would be more audited than OpenBSD by more anal coders than Theo ever thought of being. There may be only one LHC, but anybody can run a Globus module through a static code checker and fix "obvious" coding errors.

True, the LHC has limited staff and can't check every patch people send to them. But the same problem is faced by OpenBSD, Linux, X.Org, the GCC developers, and a thousand and one other mega-coding projects. They seem to solve the problem without too much strain, so what do they do that the LHC guys aren't? I don't have to be a genius to solve the LHC's security issues, I merely have to know where the geniuses are and see what they do different.

Also true, the size of the code base makes the idea of bug-free code laughable. The middleware alone is HUGE. However, that's deceptive. There's a fascinating paper on Trusted Software. Not "trustworthy", "Trusted". As in A1 Orange Book Trusted. The paper basically states that buggy software is not the issue. So long as you have a small, tightly-written security kernel within key components, where that security kernel can be proven correct, bugs elsewhere can never pose a security risk. They can do lots of other nasty things, but they can never compromise the security of the system.

As the paper in question (which I've linked to previously, on the issue of security) is written by one of those aforementioned geniuses, and as this is something those geniuses do differently, it follows that this is a factor in what makes the difference between secure software and insecure software. MPI, a common message-passing system, usually uses RSH to start applications across a cluster or grid. Since MPI is generally not going to have any means of providing passwords, this means you're looking at .rhosts files, which means you've a wide-open security hole right there. And, yes, having worked at such facilities I can tell you that they often don't use SSH or a Kerberos-hardened RSH, just the vanilla form that no sane person would use in a million years. (This goes to show that, yes, scientists truly are mad.)

Re:Why is that even possible?

[MooUK]

While you claim to be learning about hadrons, the rest of us know you're purely studying hardons.

Re:Why is that even possible?

[NeilTheStupidHead]

Not to mention that the entire Swiss Olympic track team would be made up of grad students.

Re:Why is that even possible?

[smolloy]

Like it or not, it is the case at all of these machines.

SLAC, Cern, Fermilab, DESY, KEK. All have connections to the 'net.

But you and all the other pretend-experts should go ahead assuming you know better than all these labs.

Re:Why is that even possible?

[smolloy]

Yes, that can happen, and in that case small amounts of radioactivity will be released into the accelerator housing -- an area known to be horrendously radioactive during normal operations.

No radioactivity will be released beyond areas where it is already expected.

Re:Why is that even possible?

[Jarik_Tentsu]

[quote]No, you'll land at a bash prompt. And then what? You won't know the commands necessary to get to the control system software, and, even if you did, you'd only be able to randomly tinker with magnets. This will either have no effect whatsoever, or will be prevented by the machine protection system.[/quote]

The LHC is really that idiot proof?

I'm sure there's lots and lots of protection systems, but surely there's ways of fucking it up regardless.

~Jarik

Re:Why is that even possible?

[smolloy]

You're right to say that there are lots and lots of ways to fuck it up, but when I say that, I don't mean "destroy it".

There are millions of changes you could make that would be transparent to the operation of the machine, and even more that would negatively affect its performance. There are, of course, changes that can be made that would cause a lot of damage, but the LHC folk have ~60 years of experience over dozens of machines world wide, and will have built a strong reliable protection system.

There's always the risk that something bad could happen, but I'm more worried about a random fault killing it, rather than the 1 in a bazillion chance of Random J. Hacker doing it.

Re:Why is that even possible?

[jackchance]

i don't know if you meant that as a joke, but this technique is part of the spec for TMDS (used in DVI & HDMI video)

the first eight bits are optionally inverted to even out the balance of ones and zeros and therefore the sustained average DC level. The tenth bit is added to indicate whether this inversion took place.

Re:Why is that even possible?

[mollymoo]

You're doing a physics degree and you're not going to cover particle physics? I hope you at least do some quantum mechanics. I have a physics degree (BSc, 3 years) and neither were optional. I couldn't do the maths these days, but you don't need to to have a qualitative understanding of what they're talking about. Surely it's not that hard to follow if you take the mathematical bits on faith.

Re:Why is that even possible?

[Strake]

Sure if everyone had their own LHC this wouldn't be needed, but now I assume there is more users than there is LHCs ..

Now, yes, but look at what happened with the computer. In a few years, we may all be walking around with atom smashers in our pockets.

Re:Why is that even possible?

[Cramer]

Then they can get off their lazy Ph.D.(s) and go there in person to run their experiment(s).

Re:Why is that even possible?

[smolloy]

Sure, this is bad, and it may be due to negligence or a rushed schedule as you suggest.

All I'm saying is that this is not the end-of-the-world catastrophe that everyone thinks it is.

As to the data being affected -- TFA says it was a detector control system that was breached, not the data acquisition system, so the physics (not that there is any yet) is safe.

Detector control system != Accelerator control system != Data acquisition

Re:Why is that even possible?

[Cramer]

You do know you can have the same storage in multiple "zones". That is, LHC data collection systems writing data to the same volume others are reading. This is SAN 101, btw. It's rather hard to hack a computer system via it's file system; esp. when it isn't reading anything from it.

Re:Why is that even possible?

[Sun.Jedi]

Better yet.... what happens if there is a game called Global Thermonuclear war on that equipment?

Re:Why is that even possible?

[mysidia]

Not possible. They are outputting data over 1 gigabit per second constant flow, it has to be output rapidly for immediate analysis.

The delays such a scheme would create are basically unacceptable given the scale and type of work they are doing. Because of the fact that it is so imperative the data be distributed out so rapidly.

There is a problem that there is such a massive amount of data they cannot even keep it all on hard drives -- they have to use tapes, with hard drives as cache.

If they had to shut down transferring data to record the collected data on the medium; lots of data would have to be lost, because the backlog would be so massive.

Re:Why is that even possible?

[X0563511]

Encryption. Encryption and authentication are not mutually inclusive.

Re:Why is that even possible?

[John Hasler]

They do run Linux, and I doubt that the computers that control the beam or the magnets in the detectors are on the Net. Crackers might be able to trash a lot of data but it seems unlikely that they could do any physical damage.

Re:Why is that even possible?

[devman]

Quite, but encryption doesn't really do much for me if I just give away the key to random entities a url directs me to on the web.

Re:Why is that even possible?

[John Hasler]

> What scares me is the fact that they pumped in aprox. 4.4 billion euros in this project
> and somehow with all that money it seems that they didn't invest enough in security.

How do you know they didn't? There was, after all, no damage.

> I mean, come on. A breach is one thing but "one step away" from one of the core
> components is pretty serious.

That's "one step away" according to a newsie. That "one step", if it even existed, probably involved breaking AES or similar.

Re:Why is that even possible?

[MidnightBrewer]

It might also be a matter of their schools telling them they're not going to pay for the trip.

Re:Why is that even possible?

[aliquis]

I have no idea but I would expect the energy requirements to be massive, even thought it's very low masses they are working with.

Also the piece of said equipment they was close to gaining control of was a 25.000 ton magnet or whatever the story said, try to keep that one in your pocket =P

"Is that a particle accelerator in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?"

It would be a little to easy / same thing if I had chosen the on Slashdot so popular "Is that a large hardon in your pocket or ...", or maybe even "Is that a particle accelerator in your pocket or are you just having a large hardon?" Lame.

Re:Why is that even possible?

[collinstocks]

I certainly hope they aren't connected to the Net! Still, other computers with important information on them shouldn't be connected, either. I didn't RTFA, though, so thanks for informing me of the first aspect (that they run Linux).

Re:Why is that even possible?

[KGIII]

This is a tough one in that at least some of the system needs remote access because all of the scientists working on the LHC aren't able to actually fit in there. The data is going out to many universities and there are, I understand, a number of people who can eventually actually configure/setup tests via remote.

Re:Why is that even possible?

[jd]

CERN use OS/X?

Re:Why is that even possible?

[iminplaya]

It's not like you're presented with a "destroy the world" button when you log in!

Well, maybe not a button

Re:Why is that even possible?

[nospam007]

Remember, these are the guys who _invented_ the wordlwide web, because they needed it for their colliders, not to watch porn. So I guess there is a reason it's connected to the scientific community worldwide, after all they are paying billions together to run it.

Re:Why is that even possible?

[smolloy]

I think you're thinking about this the wrong way.

When I talk about the history software, I mean the software that makes a time record of the settings of all the machine hardware.

Typically it's used to investigate weird behaviour of the machine. If it's suspected that a magnet has changed value, then they'll try to roll it back using the history software. When that doesn't work (due to the work of the uber-hacker you described), it will be immediately obvious, since the physical problem will still be there.

They'll then look at the magnet current on the control system, and (cos the uber-hacker attacked that as well), it will report the old value -- a value that simply disagrees with the physics.

Eventually, after an hour or so, someone will drive out there with a voltmeter (which can't be hacked), and then it will all become clear.

Remember, Cern is a high profile target, but only for vandals, not for the financially motivated crackers you guys will see. There's no motivation, beyond simple vandalism, for anyone to put that much work into an attack.

Re:Why is that even possible?

[shish]

Our main goal for the base distribution is to have everything compatible with Enterprise, with only a few minor additions or changes. An example of of items that were added are Pine, and OpenAFS.

Not only are these people some of the world's most hardcore physics geeks, they have enough geekyness left over to be picky over unix mail clients?

I'm impressed :-O

Re:Why is that even possible?

[GoodNicksAreTaken]

42

Re:Why is that even possible?

[tenco]

But the same problem is faced by OpenBSD, Linux, X.Org, the GCC developers, and a thousand and one other mega-coding projects. They seem to solve the problem without too much strain, so what do they do that the LHC guys aren't?

Well, maybe we should ask what the LHC guys doing that OpenBSD et.al. developers don't do. I think the answers obvious then.

Re:Why is that even possible?

[palegray.net]

*I'm running on about 2 hours of sleep, so I could be way off the mark there.

You are not off the mark.

Re:Why is that even possible?

[nuke_med]

Surely the switch from rsh to ssh is a simple one in the greater scheme of things, can't someone just hack in and find all scripts containing 'rsh' then swap the 'r' for the 's' then configure sshd then.... hmmm.... maybe not!

Re:Why is that even possible?

[freakxx]

No, they are using Linux.

But I would take this opportunity to congratulate the Wine team that they are finally reaching the mark and bringing a bug-to-bug compatibility!

2008 would be a year for Wine!

Re:Why is that even possible?

[freakxx]

"I know you are being funny, but CERN uses Scientific Linux. [scientificlinux.org]"

I have said it before and I say it now: Wine is catching the mark.

Everybody, please take this opportunity to congratulate the Wine team!!

Re:Why is that even possible?

[Muhammar]

The break-in was noticed instantly as all network users were fluent in Greek.

(Hot LHC babe says: "Talk dirty symbols to me")

Re:Why is that even possible?

[kestasjk]

Not sure what to make of your comment, because I've been told by others that standard model stuff generally isn't taught at BSc level. (I mean what would we use it for?)

But yes we do quantum mechanics, that's not sub-atomic.

Also as I understand it's completely mathematical, so taking the mathematical "bits" on faith is like taking the whole lot on faith.

Re:Why is that even possible?

[John Hasler]

The data collection computers have to be on the Net. Data reduction and analysis is being done by a world-wide network of tens of thousands of computers at many different institutions. Setting up a private network is impractical. It is also unnecessary. There are no secrets to protect.

Re:Why is that even possible?

[windsurfer619]

You do realize that the LHC is producing roughly 400 GB of data every 10 seconds, right?

Re:Why is that even possible?

[catwh0re]

It appears you're looking for the higgs-bison particle, do you want to:

- Create stranglets
- Create a small, non evaporating black hole
- Join a religious cult and do gods bidding, aka Contact the movie.
- Assume you know more than physicists who have been working on the LHC for the past 14 years.

Re:Why is that even possible?

[dodobh]

You get a bash shell with the # prompt.
> game
Shall we play a game? You can choose between
(a) Tictactoe
(b) Chess
(c) Global thermonuclear war
>

Re:Why is that even possible?

[argStyopa]

Not to sound totally stupid, but why wouldn't they dump the data into a system that only had read-only access from outside, and that's the only way to get in from "out there"?

Re:Why is that even possible?

[Reality Master 201]

It appears you're drawing an incorrect inference from a post on Slashdot; do you want to:
- fail at making a clever response
- try re-reading and understanding the rather obvious interpretation

I was asking why that's possible. One would think they'd be able to shuttle data off the detectors without directly connecting them or exposing their control systems to the internet. I'm not discounting that there's a legitimate reason for that wasn't done, which is why I cleverly made the title of my post in the form of a question I wanted answered : "why is that even possible?"

Re:Why is that even possible?

[rubycodez]

Nonsense. Don't discount social engineering; coercion; subverting and tampering with policies, training and procedures.

Re:Why is that even possible?

[mysidia]

The article says: If they had hacked into a second computer network, they could have turned off parts of the vast detector and, said the insider,

Meaning whatever system they hacked into does not directly control anything.

For the 'data distribution' machines to efficiently receive data, they have to share a network segment with the receiving machines.

For the control machines to callibrate the collectors, they have to have access to their output.

I believe good security practice would be to use some firewalls (granted, very fast firewalls) to limit access from the more publicly accessible networks to the more secure networks, and define all interactions very carefully.

This is more important than it is to try to isolate collector & control functions.

Anything reachable from outside the immediate vicinity should have very rigidly defined interactions with the more secure network.

When physicists outside the immediate vicinity need to setup their experiment, their access should be limited to an insecure network, and someone on-site should manually handle uploading any last-minute adjustments to the experiment.

The machines that receive the data requests should be on a network treated as less secure than that the machine distributing data reside on. Effectively making it a one-way communication, other than specially allowed TCP acknowledgement packets (passed by proxy).

Re:Why is that even possible?

[laddiebuck]

Vista *was* a big bang for a lot of users...

Re:Why is that even possible?

[aliquis]

Except it's expensive equipment I don't see what makes it that obviously "important."

But I guess it can give people skill points in the right crowds.

Re:Why is that even possible?

[aliquis]

I don't see why they would make a complete global network for every "important" on the Internet, pretty retarded if you ask me, or well, unrealistic at least.

Re:Why is that even possible?

[nicholas645]

BLACK HOLES, WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE! According to a scientist/spokesman for CERN interviewed on PBS Evening News the day before the LHC was to go into operation, he claimed that there was nothing to worry about. They do indeed expect black holes to form, but they will disappear almost instantly, and furthermore he explained that these black holes are created in nature all the time. Past our atmosphere in space these particles are moving at the speed of light banging one another all the time, nothing to worry about. What they're excited about is that this will be the first time that the black holes will be created in the lab under controlled conditions. The Atlantic had a cr*ppy article on the dangers of the project and in a very flippant manner explained that we may all die once the switch was turned on, another example of an irresponsible piece written just for sensationalism.

Re:Why is that even possible?

[mollymoo]

What would you use quantum mechanics for? A lot of the stuff you learn in a physics degree is applicable only if you want to work in the field. As to taking the mathematical bits on faith, I meant just so you could understand what the LHC was all about and follow the abstract of papers on the subject. You don't need to be able to follow every step of a proof for that. Besides, if you don't have your own particle accelerator in the shed you'll be taking it all on faith anyway.

Re:Why is that even possible?

[Muad'Dave]

Bit Stuffing was used long before TMDS for DC bias control and for escaping Frame Start/Stop sequences.

Re:Why is that even possible?

[Lord Jester]

hehe

That was the first thing that crossed my mind.

It would explain some things.

Re:Why is that even possible?

[Bryansix]

Why does the data need to be distributed rapidly (as in not time delayed)? They didn't have the data before. What the hell is going to go wrong if the data they have is one day old?

Re:Why is that even possible?

[Bryansix]

NO. Why would I know that? Either way, solutions are scalable.

Re:Why is that even possible?

[mysidia]

Because they have built a grid and process the data worldwide on hundreds of thousands of machines; until the data is distributed, they cannot analyze it.

This is almost exactly the same question as "Why can't they just keep all the data in RAM for a while?"

Not distributing data to their storage grid may be equivalent to losing the data.

It is my understanding, they have a constant stream 1-2gbps per second. It would be ridiculously cost prohibitive to purchase sufficient storage to hold data that is 2 days old before moving it to their primary and tape storage and distributing to their centers all over the world.

It is highly inefficient and doesn't make much logical sense to do so.

There must be other ways to design things to be secure without creating unnecessary structure that will disrupt or delay the flow of the data.

Re:Why is that even possible?

[Criton]

Because someone was stupid and thought it should be on the network that shares data from the experiments likely for easier maintenance. The fix would be to completely isolate the network for the control systems from any network connected to the internet. I'm still in disbelief they made such an epic and obvious mistake.

Why in the heck

[al0ha]

are the control systems for the collider Internet accessible? Holy smokes has nobody learned about best security practices over there?

Re:This begs the question

[lymond01]

Windows updates.

Greek Hackers

[darth_MALL]

Any chance they had a Trojan Horse at the ready?

Re:Greek Hackers

[Anonymous Coward]

Any chance they had a Trojan Horse at the ready?

No, but leave it to them to find a back door.

Re:Greek Hackers

[R2.0]

"Any chance they had a Trojan Horse at the ready?"

Maybe, but I think the prospect of penetrating a big, dark tunnel was too much of a temptation.

Re:Greek Hackers

[Bill, Shooter of Bul]

I'd be very wary of any large Mountain Dew Delivery Trucks appearing at the gates, if I were Cern.

Or wine trucks, Or what ever European Nerds drink. Does anyone know?

Re:Greek Hackers

[trip11]

Beer and coffee mostly. Depending on how much work one needs to get done after drinking said beverage. The amount of coffee (espresso mostly) consumed at cern is staggering really. And yes, I'm writing this from my desk at cern while drinking my 5th cup of espresso and waiting for my code to finish compiling.

Obviously..

[plasmacutter]

[they] 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

quick, hide the 21x15 meter finger painting and the 21x15 meter refrigerator!

Re:Obviously..

[jd]

What you need is the 100 tesla refrigerator magnet for the 12,500 tonne refrigerator. (It'd reduce car pollution within a ten mile radius...)

Proves the geek stereotype

[Ethanol-fueled]

So smart, and yet, so stupid.

*sigh*

Motivation

[BountyX]

They were probabaly commissioned to hack the LHC by the Greek Orthadox chruch hahahah

Well the world WOULDN'T have ended...

[KalvinB]

but some jackasses decided to mess with things they knew nothing about.

I'll get my towel.

Re:Well the world WOULDN'T have ended...

[ronoholiv]

Hmm...epic fail isn't strong enough to describe those idiots...

How about "COSMIC FAIL"

Re:Well the world WOULDN'T have ended...

[thewiz]

More importantly, do you have your Guide?

Re:Well the world WOULDN'T have ended...

[PunkOfLinux]

So, is the hair on the very top of your head any shorter now?

Re:Well the world WOULDN'T have ended...

[rpmayhem]

Wait...why don't you have it with you already? NEVER forget your towel.

Re:Well the world WOULDN'T have ended...

[BronsCon]

No, the woosh was far enough over his head that even he, himself, did not hear it.

Re:Well the world WOULDN'T have ended...

[LiENUS]

No, but yours probably is a bit shorter.

Re:Well the world WOULDN'T have ended...

[Cheesey]

Hey at least that frood knows where his towel is.

Re:Well the world WOULDN'T have ended...

[wize-acre]

Find a bottle of Ol Janx Spirit and you're set.

WarGames

[neonprimetime]

"Mr. Potato Head! Back doors are not secrets!"

Re:WarGames

[ethanms]

+1 :)

Computer security rocket science

[Yetihehe]

See? See? Computer security is harder than building 27km ring with enough precision to smash single protons!

Can't we all just get along?

[mpoulton]

Can't geeks just be happy for society's scientific accomplishments and not try to screw up a good thing just because it's possible? Like the guy says, it's hard enough to make these things work when everyone's working together. Assholes.

Re:Can't we all just get along?

[gblfxt]

its Greeks that aren't happy for science, not geeks, i think geeks like science

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greeks

Re:Can't we all just get along?

[Skal Tura]

never going to happen, there's always people wanting to gain access to such a system.

Their reasons to access LHC Grid might be many, maybe completely irrelevant to LHC itself, but gaining access to that grid. What secrets may lie in that network?

Or what could you accomplish with all that bandwidth, storage space and computational power within your grasb?

Think of the terrifying idea that in LHC GRID most of the servers in it could directly access internet on a very fast connection used as a botnet to send spam, or even worse and more likely, attack DNS root servers or something along those lines.

and like you said, some people just want to do it because they can.

This attack was catched, but think about the possibility of a stealth attack which has gone unnoticed.

Re:Can't we all just get along?

[green_abishi]

While I might not agree with their style, they've drawn attention to what is obviously subpar security and possibly prevented a more serious/malicious break-in. FTA: "There seems to be no harm done. From what they can tell, it was someone making the point that CMS was hackable," said James Gillies, spokesman for Cern.

Re:Can't we all just get along?

[LatAmBoy]

totally agree. it's the stupid -but very human- tendency to do things just because one can. morals are not always nonsense rules imposed by parents or authoritarian societies/governments; it's also the result of people agreeing on some beliefs and commitments to get along with each other and then internalizing those agreements and making them part of one's self. i know very little about physics, my field is psychology, and i'm far from knowledegeable about the benefits this LHC can provide, but unless it's made public (and obvious) that it's beinmg used for massive destruction or something alike, i'll still think that trying to hack into that system is immature and irresponsible. also, i think that this geek/nerd identity (smart, indoors, obsessed with one little atom of realty, mad with the social world) is fucking overrated and hyped. intelligence is built through interaction and yes, books and websites are a media to interact with others, but the real world is out there, in the minds, gestures, speeches and EMOTIONS of other (not only human) beings. maybe if the morons trying to hack the LHC took the time to let themselves reflect in other mirrors than the "geek community" (hey, we may have an oxymoron here) they would spend their time in a better way. sorry for my poor english, it's not my mother language. and i'm glad to post here again, it's a really interesting website.

Re:Can't we all just get along?

[LatAmBoy]

actually ancient times greeks may have started "science" the way we understand it today. check some Aristotle basics people.

Re:Can't we all just get along?

[gblfxt]

that, my friend, is wherein the irony lies.

Re:Can't we all just get along?

[mikiN]

Or what could you accomplish with all that bandwidth, storage space and computational power within your grasb?

Those kids were probably imagining a Beowulf cluster of it.
Enough network bandwidth and storage capacity to suck in and share all the pr0n and warez they would ever need.
Thank goodness the DMCA doesn't apply in Switzerland, for otherwise CERN would surely collapse into a black hole under the sheer mass of subpoena's, court orders and takedown notices crashing on their doorstep.

Re:Can't we all just get along?

[tenman]

It's not the fellow science geeks that want to play around inside the system. It's the crazies that think they are doing the world a favor by shutting down the machine that will bring about the end of the world.

Re:Can't we all just get along?

[dominious]

I'm greek so I'll give a summary of what they say in the defaced site: They say that they did not attempt to mess with any data in the system and did not want to destroy anything. In fact, they FIXED the bug that let them in. Mainly they just accuse some members of GHS (which i guess is another underground hacker team). The defacement was actually done in order to prove themeselves to other hackers, not to attack CERN itself.

Re:Can't we all just get along?

[Walter Carver]

Can't geeks just be happy for society's scientific accomplishments and not try to screw up a good thing just because it's possible?

Greeks yes. Greek hackers no, it seems.

Disclaimer: I live in Greece. People are generally ignorant here about what's going on in LHC. Including me :-P

Ugh

[Rinisari]

It won't be physicists that create a black hole at the LHC. It will be some idiot script kiddie from half the world away!

Re:Ugh

[ntipouan]

Even if some mini black hole is created somehow,
it will do no harm.

Check this people, it has mostly arguements,
and the math are limited:

http://www.iop.org/EJ/abstract/0954-3899/35/11/115004/

ps: I know you were joking.

LHC webcams

[GoNINzo]

I found an interesting video feed for the system they were accessing.

http://www.cyriak.co.uk/lhc/lhc-webcams.html

Watch it for a minute, you can see the effects the hackers are having on them.

Re:LHC webcams

[AioKits]

So, anyone want to buy my couch? $20!

Re:This begs the question

[__aagctu1952]

For one thing (leaving the whole "begging the question" mistake aside), to send absolutely mind-bogglingly large amounts of data to the Grid. The bandwidth required is massive, and they use a combination of private, dedicated links and regular Internet connections to do it.
(Read up on the LHC Grid; it's fascinating stuff!)

Re:Air gap + Sneakernet

[Yetihehe]

Sneakernet? Yeah, because there are no pendrive viruses...

My BAD....

[zannox]

I was told I could download Spore without DRM from that IP.

Re:Computer security rocket science

[pegr]

And I always thought the electrons did what the protons wanted them to...

Aliens Already Did This

[mfh]

The scientists behind the £4.4bn atom smasher had already received threatening emails and been besieged by telephone calls from worried members of the public concerned by speculation that the machine could trigger a black hole to swallow the earth, or earthquakes and tsunamis, despite endless reassurances to the contrary from the likes of Prof Stephen Hawking.

Why is it that wherever progress goes, controversy follows?

Re:Aliens Already Did This

[Yetihehe]

Why is it that wherever progress goes, controversy follows?

It's Newton's fault, now every action has equal and opposite reaction!

Epic FAIL

[davidwr]

What could have been:

Cracker1: Cool, looks like we got into the outer network, let's try the inner one.
Cracker2: OK, try this...
Cracker1: What's this program "/staff/sfalken/games/Tictacto.exe"
Cracker2: I don't know, let's try it.
Cracker1: OK.
*EARTH-SHATTERING BOOM*

God: It's the end of the world as I made it, and I feel fine.

So I'm guessing the hackers read /.

[Chyeld]

Given Wednesday's article on hacking industrial control machinery.

And given the number of astounded comments, I'm guessing no one else read it.

Why have it connected to the internet? Because the people who design the machinery for these things aren't IT, they are engineers. They don't think they NEED to worry about security. And when they do, it's physical, not electronic.

Wasn't the first go around of the internet being designed almost completely without any thought towards security a lesson to anyone? Haven't the warnings about how easy it would be to take down our whole electric grid due to the crappy security soaked into anyone's head?

This isn't exceptional, this is the norm.

Re:So I'm guessing the hackers read /.

[horza]

The initial Internet didn't have any security but didn't need any as it was a closed garden of academics. My friend worked for CERN and he was a Linux guy with a good grasp of security. In fact I am guessing you know very little about CERN.

Phillip.

Re:So I'm guessing the hackers read /.

[Stooshie]

The whole point of the internet is to allow people access.

The whole CERN experiment involves over 10,000 scientists from institutions in over 100 countries.

The sysadmins should be making it secure. It's typical of all IT departments I've been involved with. They try to stop access rather than making access secure.

No access may well be secure. But then no-one can do there jobs.

Re:Air gap + Sneakernet

[SBacks]

Portable harddrives to move the data?

http://www.nsf.gov/discoveries/disc_summ.jsp?cntn_id=111420

This thing will generate 28000 TB of data per hour! Imagine the number of grad students it would take to transfer all those hard drives back and forth.

Stop

[Bo'Bob'O]

I don't know who you guys are, but stop this shit, seriously.

We don't need a Mark Chapman of the geek world.

if customary antihacking measure fail

[circletimessquare]

perhaps a beam of antiprotons pointed at athens will solve the problem
 

Before anyone asks

[davidwr]

Yes, earth-shattering booms can be expected when you try to run a DOS EXE on a 25-year-old Unix box.

Re:Before anyone asks

[mikiN]

As long as the EXE is actually a renamed COM file (which has no header, and DOS doesn't care either way), adheres to the a.out format (no ELF back then) and executes some weird and interesting syscalls before possibly dumping core on an illegal instruction, everything is possible. Remember the 'crashme' tool?

Re:The correct term

[zappepcs]

I'm with you on the nomenclature issue. Such an important experiment and mankind in general offers far too many whack jobs who want to shut it down.

The logic of the 'we're all gonna die' crowd eludes me. If nothing happens, all is good. If the world ends, doesn't matter anyway. All those that think they will go to meet their maker should be happy either way, right? WTF?

Re:Air gap + Sneakernet

[fotbr]

slaves^H^H^H^H^H^H grad students are cheap

Re:Air gap + Sneakernet

[Ant P.]

Portable hard drives? With the amount of data this thing outputs? Are you SERIOUS?

Did they use a Trojan?

[Gotung]

Just wondering if they used a trojan to gain access.

Sneaky Greeks.

Re:Did they use a Trojan?

[Luyseyal]

Just wondering if they used a trojan to gain access.

Only to your wife. :)

-l

Re:Did they use a Trojan?

[Gotung]

I'm not married but thanks for the heads up.

I will be sure to keep closer watch on the future Mrs. Gotung

Re:Did they use a Trojan?

[Luyseyal]

I think what you mean is you'll "beware of Greeks bearing gifts"...

Cheers,
-l

Re:Did they use a Trojan?

[RealGrouchy]

Just wondering if they used a trojan to gain access.

Trojan, eh?

"Baby, I can't infect your LHC; I've got protection!"

- RG>

Re:Did they use a Trojan?

[StormReaver]

"Just wondering if they used a trojan to gain access. "

No, but CERN had the foresight to build a 27KM-long generic condom to prevent spawning unwanted black holes.

We're suppose to trust these guys?

[thinktech]

We're suppose to trust that the LHC is perfectly safe ... but the same guys telling us this thought it was a good idea to make the controls accessible via the web? When the first black hole is created and becomes stable because it's not subject to the same gravitational and environmental instabilities as the SURFACE OF THE SUN... somehow "I told you so" isn't going to seem enough. Geeze... even in the cheesiest sci-fi novel, they make scientists perform these cool experiments outside the orbit of pluto.

Re:We're suppose to trust these guys?

[Aphoxema]

Geeze... even in the cheesiest sci-fi novel, they make scientists perform these cool experiments outside the orbit of pluto.

That's how we know it's reality!

Re:Air gap + Sneakernet

[spazdor]

None that can survive a low-level reformat.

As far as I know, information flows out of CERN in high volume, and not in. There's no reason for CERN machines to be exposed to data contaminants from the wild.

Re:Green Hackers, oh great.

[R2.0]

Reading is Fundamental - it's "Greek", NOT "Green".

One is a bunch of people that fuck others up the ass because it's fun.

The others live on a peninsula in the Mediterranean.

Good thing greeks like that man love

[Nickodeemus]

cause they are gonna get bent over for this one.

what retard put it online?

[eagl]

What kind of idiot decided it would be a good idea to hook up that network to the outside world? Are they anticipating researchers waking up at 1am and thinking "hey, I want to run one more experiment from home before I go to bed..."?

Their internal network ought to be completely physically segregated, and results transferred via sneaker-net. Anything else is just inviting outsiders to break in and play with really large magnets and particle guns. It's no different than them securing the entry doors with those plastic child-proof doorknob covers... If the door exists, someone is going to look for a way through. Simple answer - don't provide ANY connection between the outside world and the control network. *duh*

Maybe we really *should* be taking out black-hole insurance...?

Re:what retard put it online?

[Aphoxema]

Sounds like an Act of God to me, it's gonna cost you a fortune, and won't you feel like shit when a black hole doesn't crush all your property into a space that's size can't even yet be speculated?

Re:what retard put it online?

[smolloy]

All these machines have connections to the internet. This allows on-call technicians to ssh in to debug a problem remotely, and for facilities management to make checks on the performance of the machine.

It's not like connecting to the control software will present you with a big red button labelled "Black Hole Generator". You'll be presented with a bash prompt, and, if you can figure out the right command, possibly a control screen that you don't understand.

These machines are stunningly complex, and the most likely outcome of some random script kiddie fucking with things is that *nothing* will happen. Someone more knowledgable (or lucky) might be able to find something that will be prevented by the machine protection system, or cause the machine to shut down for a while. Bad, but not as scary as you suggest.

Seriously. Anyone who thinks that random "hackers" can do any real damage, or that these machines shouldn't be on the internet, doesn't know anything about them.

(PS: I'm an accelerator physicist who has worked with several of these machines.)

Re:what retard put it online?

[JustinOpinion]

Are they anticipating researchers waking up at 1am and thinking "hey, I want to run one more experiment from home before I go to bed..."?

I know you were trying to joke... but the answer is probably "yes."

I've never worked at CERN, but it may be similar to large-scale science user facilities (e.g. x-ray synchrotrons) that I have worked at. Specifically, you want to be able to control the instruments remotely for a variety of reasons. Part of it is safety (in order to minimize time spent near radiation sources and industrial equipment). Part of it is convenience (to check on the status before driving all the way to the actual facility). Part of it is for collaboration (allowing an instrument scientist to log into the machine and change a setting for you, show you how to do something, etc.).

At many facilities, you can change samples, alter instrument settings, re-align, etc.; all without actually going to the facility. Scientists doing those kinds of experiments do indeed appreciate the ability to log into the machine at 1am and check on the status.

There are of course safeguards in place (e.g. hardware safety triggers that cannot be remotely over-ridden)... but it is sometimes possible to break something with remote commands. Now, most of the facilities that work like this are running samples, and need remote manipulation to switch samples and re-align and so forth. LHC doesn't have the same set of requirements... but there are indeed a variety of legitimate reasons why a scientist might need to remotely log into the system and change some settings.

Large facilities are designed to "do science" 24/7. Remote control is one thing that helps scientists maximize the usefulness of equipment. (Such as waking up at 1 am, checking on an experiment you started before leaving work, realizing the data is no good, fixing a few parameters, and running a new more useful experiment.)

Re:what retard put it online?

[profplump]

You could make the same argument about most computers in an office -- why are they even on the Internet? It's just unnecessary risk. Why do you have someone move an external hard drive from the public mail server to the internal mail server and visa versa every hour? The few people that actually need live Internet access can use one of the dedicated systems on another physical network.

And even the totally impractical air gap doesn't really provide the protection you think it does -- it prevents interactive attacks, but it doesn't actually stop the flow of information to the Internet and back, it just make it asynchronous.

But hey, why let facts and pragmatism get in the way of your system design bashing.

Re:what retard put it online?

[mikiN]

Worse yet, neither Freddie Mac nor Fanny Mae can quote you a mortgage on that property, either before or after the crunch. The horror!

Re:what retard put it online?

[tenman]

no your not. If you were, you would have provided more facts to prove your story, and you wouldn't have posted 'alomst' the same post twice. you're a toll, and you've never seen an accelerator except on websites.... just like the rest of us.

Re:what retard put it online?

[smolloy]

http://xkcd.com/438/ Chill out. :)

1/ Convince teh slashdot I'm an accelerator physicist
2/ ...
3/ Profit!

I *am* an accelerator physicist. You can believe me or not. I don't care :)

Re:what retard put it online?

[InfiniteLoopCounter]

(PS: I'm an accelerator physicist who has worked with several of these machines.)

no your not. If you were, you would have provided more facts to prove your story, and you wouldn't have posted 'alomst' the same post twice. you're a toll, and you've never seen an accelerator except on websites.... just like the rest of us.

As a student in physics myself (believe it or not I suppose) I'd like to point out that, when studying quantum mechanics and particle physics, the lecturers frequently made spelling mistakes and pronunciation errors. This is likely due to the fact that English is a second language for some of these people and this did not impair their ability to write equations.

Some physicists plainly have disdain for learning how to efficiently operate a computer. Terribly programmed scripts are the norm. It seems to me hardly likely to get many computer science facts from a physicist beyond the basics (as they specialize in what they are good at after all - physics).

However, I'd like to think that CERN - the place where Tim Bernard Lee and co. laid the foundations for HTML - has perfectly capable computer science people to write efficient safeguards into their system.

You, parent poster, on the other hand, I do not think can be trusted to evaluate whether or not the GP poster is actually an accelerator physicist (as claimed) based on the incorrect spelling of "alomst" and a few facts. Indeed you first sentence has two grammatical mistakes (it should be "No you're not"). Plus, you're conviction is trollworthy.

PS - for the record, I am not sure whether the GP poster is actually an accelerator physicist. I believe all information on the internet should be taken with a grain of salt.

Re:what retard put it online?

[smolloy]

The problem is that there's nothing I can really do to prove my assertion. I could provide a link to a list of my papers, but there's no way to be sure that those papers were written by the /. user with my username. Also, I'm not that keen on giving a troll my email address.

I could provide a link to the details of my office (phone number, location, etc.) in the lab I work at, but that's got the same security issues as giving out my email address.

I could demonstrate a knowledge of some technical jargon, but how would a non-expert know that I was right, and how would they know I hadn't just skimmed it from a few quick Google searches?

But, more to the point, can't my post be judged on its merits, rather than disregarding it due to the non-verifiable claim that I am an expert?

As I said in a previous post. You can believe me or not -- I don't care :)

PS: Was "alomst" my spelling mistake, or his? I can only find it in his post, but he seems to be referring to a mistake I made.

Re:what retard put it online?

[smolloy]

Thanks for believing in me man :)

Seriously though -- in all the years SLAC, Cern, Fermilab, KEK, etc., have been online, how many computer security breaches have there been that have harmed the machine, hurt anyone, or resulted in any escape of radioactivity? I can't think of any, but perhaps you can?

They wanted fame, I hope they get shame

[Aphoxema]

This is such a shame that people are so scared of this thing that they'll go this far. Maybe the reason it's so easy to convince people to be afraid of this thing is because it's so damn big, and I suspect that it being in a foreign country(ies) has a sour effect on some people. However, some people I've spoken with about it aren't even aware it's on the other side of the planet, one person thought it was in California.

This tool may solve some of the most incredible mysteries of our universe (and bring up more interesting questions), but I feel some terrible and tragic emotion that I know that, no matter how revolutionary the results may or may not be, ignorance is a powerful and destructive force.

I am damn near wishing the LHC destroys us all despite having no doubt that it won't, Humanity is really starting to disappoint me.

I used to not care about anything, even 9/11 didn't phase me, but the changes I've had in my life has taught me to respect life and individuals, but it's also given me insight into the nature of conflict in people.

The values people have are so different, and it's those differences that shape some of the best things in the world, but the people who lack values that's becoming distasteful.

What did these pricks think would happen? Oh, they upset some work. For a multibillion project like this, it's going to take big, intentional explosions and a lot of mindless people to stop it.

That's just me wishing for the strength of the project, though. I really will shed some tears if only a few squeaky wheels can halt the LHC in it's tracks.

Re:They wanted fame, I hope they get shame

[Weedlekin]

"Humanity is really starting to disappoint me"

You must be quite young to not have realised how disappointing humanity is until now.

Re:They wanted fame, I hope they get shame

[Aphoxema]

I'm 24, I suppose I am. The real difference in my life now than what it was is how much I hear about the world outside of what's in my town. Eight years ago I only used the internet for downloading music and bullshitting with other losers on IRC.

I hung out with drug dealers, lunatics, and all sorts of low-lifes, I'd thought the terrible things I often saw were limited to where I was and other big cities like New York. Where I am now really is a much nicer place, but all my ignorance is catching up to me now that I'm learning how volatile a state the rest of the world is now.

Things like the LHC excites me and gives me hope for the so-called 'better tomorrow', seeing these people fuck with it like this gives me no surprise, and that's why it hurts.

Re:They wanted fame, I hope they get shame

[Weedlekin]

" I'm learning how volatile a state the rest of the world is now"

The world's been volatile for the entire span of recorded history, and was in all likelihood volatile before then. The location of the "hotspots" varies over time, but there hasn't been a single day on which no wars are being fought anywhere on this planet at least since the invention of civilisation, and probably before the invention of civilisation.

"Things like the LHC excites me and gives me hope for the so-called 'better tomorrow', seeing these people fuck with it like this gives me no surprise, and that's why it hurts."

We could be living in a golden age where everyone on the planet had everything they could possibly need, and any act that didn't harm others was allowed, but there would still be groups of people who aren't satisfied with their lot in life, and show their frustration by attacking the property and / or lives of others, and a small but disruptive element made up of malicious fuckers that derive pleasure from depriving others of it.

A wise man once said that humanity is like a septic tank because although the biggest lumps of shit always float to the top, this doesn't mean what's underneath isn't also a load of shit.

Um, for all you jokers out there...

[rickb928]

Wondering why the LHC is connected to the Internet 'at all'...

Why was the Web even developed? Why was HTTP even thought of? Why was a graphical browser of any interest?

CERN. Ask Mr. Berners-Lee. And then contemplate the irony of wondering this at all.

Sadly, it looks like CERN needs to work on the security more, but hey, that's in the spirit of the World-Wide Wild Web, eh?

Re:Um, for all you jokers out there...

[mikiN]

Sure, but if I had to choose between either the Web crashing or the Earth crashing (into a black hole), I'd choose the Web.
The Earth has some darn nice features but it falls short in the area of user-friendliness, for its reset button is quite inaccessible. Maybe we should file a complaint with Magrathea (or the mice who commissioned the Earth's construction in the first place). Anyone know if it's still under warranty?

OMG

[PunkOfLinux]

Please, can we stop the fucking hysteria over the LHC?
My girlfriend called me wednesday in hysterics because some ignorant bastard told her the world was ending. I explained to her that it's fine, and she's fine now, but for christ's sake, can these idiots perpetuating this fud just either a) shut the fuck or b) learn the facts?

I'm so sick of this...

Re:OMG

[Aphoxema]

I've already had to calm down 4 people myself, apparently mainstream media doesn't give you the crucial details of the argument to avoid sensationalism. It's really strange, someone needs to come up with a place where people can speak freely to those who are interested without relying on broadcasting or what other people decided is good for them.

Too bad, I don't think we'll ever have anything like that.

A shame, really.

Be nice if it could be accessible at any time in the privacy of your own home, too, but I'm just dreaming.

Re:OMG

[PunkOfLinux]

yes, but how many people will think "OMG the news says it! I believe that over anything on the intarwebz!!"

Sigh... at least my girlfriend understands that it's fine now. Thanks, /., for giving me the information i needed to calm her down. :D

Re:OMG

[Aphoxema]

The painful part is knowing that with how easily they're persuaded by television, it's just as easy for me to say some bullshit like "It's already been done before a whole bunch of times and nothing happened".

Re:OMG

[PunkOfLinux]

She's in high-school, and is largely non-technical. After someone (myself) told her that it's fine, and gave scientific backup, she was fine. Can't blame her for not knowing it all.

beep

[jollyreaper]

You want to make a black hole to suck up the earth? How about a nice game of chess instead?

Are you sure they're Greek hackers?

[zalas]

How can we be sure they were Greek hackers? What if they were agents of the TechnoCore "performing experiments on farcasters" while pretending to be Greek hackers? <_<

Re:Are you sure they're Greek hackers?

[vagabond_gr]

Of course we only managed to track some of the hackers' nicks: "f3t4", "0u20" and "5Yr74k1", but we're quite sure they're Greek.

The answer

[fejes]

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=how-lhc-may-change-internet The LHC produces 15 Petabytes of data each year, analyzed at hundreds of centres around the world. Are you going to suggest (as some genius did below) that they copy the data to 15,000 x 1Tb drives, and then fedex it around the world?

Re:The answer

[idontgno]

How 'bout this: "Data diode" Petabytes of data come out, nothing comes in. Ever. You wanna tell LHC something, you walk up to the console and tell it in person.

Sheesh, for the love of $DIETY, never NEVER NEVER connect the control system of anything more important than your soda machine to the public internet. Even through firewalls.

Re:The answer

[fejes]

From the wikipedia article:

"Furthermore since the low side cannot receive data from the high side, it can never reliably establish that data has been successfully transferred."

As a scientist, I think that's kind of important. I'd hate to detect a higgs bosun, and then lose the one data packet because it failed a checksum from a source from which the data can't be re-requested.

I'm sure there are many other reasons why CERN isn't airgapping the whole system, but it's an awful lot to ask for a collaborative research environment to be completely isolated from it's community. On the other hand, putting a control system on a universe readable web page probably wasn't a great idea.

Re:The answer

[Bane1998]

The LHC produces 15 Petabytes of data each year, analyzed at hundreds of centres around the world. Are you going to suggest (as some genius did below) that they copy the data to 15,000 x 1Tb drives, and then fedex it around the world?

Some math for 15,000 HDs shipped overnight:
15PB / 24hr == 182.04 GB/s == 1456.25 Gb/s

Versus transmitting it at 10 Gb/s:
10 Gb/sec == 1.25 GB/sec == 4.395 TB/hour == 37.59 PB/year == 15 PB / 145.6 days

So, by fedexing 15,000 drives you are getting better bandwidth by a factor of 146 or so. A difference of 'tomorrow' versus 'about 4 months.' Of course, it's probably much more expensive. But don't ever underestimate the bandwidth of shipping hard drives.

Re:The answer

[idontgno]

Wikipedia is nothing if not simplistic. The only thing you lose by not having backchannel is automatic retransmission of corrupted data segments. You can still detect and flag bad blocks, which will happen with only the same frequency as bad blocks in a bidirectional medium of comparable capacity. And, if you're willing to use a bit more bandwidth, you can apply forward error correction to fix bad packets at the "low" side. Otherwise, you make up a bad data list that you can sneaker-net back to the high side to control data retransmission.

Hell, I'm not gonna engineer the whole solution. Let's just say that the current user community (intelligence, military planning) automatically transfers data through data diodes in a daily volume only perhaps one order of magnitude smaller than CERN's. Any problem you care to name has already been addressed.

Isolating inbound command and control from outbound publicly-available data isn't a radical technical challenge; it's not even a novel problem. The solutions exist and work just fine. Only carelessness, laziness, or cheapness get in the way.

In the final analysis, a command-and-control net should only share electricity with the public network. EVER.

Re:The answer

[Neeth]

Better bandwidth, worse latency.

Great, a Geek-induced Pepsi Syndrome

[unassimilatible]

Ross Denton: Hello, hello, I'm Ross Denton, head of public relations for the Two Mile nuclear facility. First, I'd like to welcome all members off the press to Two Mile Island. I hope you enjoy your stay here and that you'll come back again real soon. Now, there will be box lunches at air cooling tower #1 after the briefing, and later the buses will take you back to the motel for a special screening of the Jane Fonda film, "Barbarella".

Male Reporter #1: What about the accident here at the plant?

Ross Denton: That what? Oh yes, yes, the accident. Uh, let me give you a little uh, technical, uh, background here. [ shows a diagram of a nuclear reactor pointing to nuclear energy, pointing to a toaster. ] This is a nuclear reactor. Now, the nuclear fuel here is used to generate energy here, which is sent to your homes to make toast.

Male Reporter #2: But what about the accident?

Ross Denton: I was getting to that. Sometime yesterday afternoon we experienced what we like to call a surprise. And, well, we had to release some radioactive steam.

Female Reporter #1: Well, how much radiation are we being exposed to right now?

Ross Denton: Well, I'm sure all of us here have been to the doctor and had our chest x-ray, haven't we? Well, it's just like that, only it's as if the doctor had to give you the chest x-ray over, and over, and over again. Or, it's like falling asleep under a sun lamp for a week or two! Or, it's like drying your hair in a microwave oven! And to give you some idea of how little danger there actually is, President Carter will be here tomorrow. Now, gentlemen, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Yes, I'm sorry I have to cut this press conference short, but now I'd like to hand the stage over to the Two Mile players! They're a pro-nuclear mime troope, and they're going to perform a little skit for you, kids!

*** Ross Denton: Good afternoon, good afternoon, ladies and gentleman of the press. First, as to the president's condition, let me say that the president is feeling certainly "stronger" than he's ever felt. And he would like to be with us right here, in this room if he could. I think now I'll just open the door to questions-

Female Reporter #1: Yes, is it true that the president is 100 feet tall?

Ross Denton: Nooooo! Absolutely not!

Male reporter #3: Is the president 90 feet tall?

Ross Denton: No comment.

Re:The correct term

[Daimanta]

"If nothing happens, all is good. If the world ends, doesn't matter anyway."

Yeah, that's why I oppose having safety measures on nuclear weapons. I mean, if nobody abuses it, all is good. If we get a big nuclear war it doesn't matter anyway.

Why does it need internet access

[Eravnrekaree]

I am surprised such systems are directly connected to the Internet at all. Why does a particle collider need internet access?

With it seems every computer system on the planet hackable, one wonders how we got to this situation. Perhaps it is due to the overuse of C rather than better protected languages like Perl or Ruby for instance, and thus buffer overruns

Re:Why does it need internet access

[kobatan]

Why does a particle collider need internet access?

For the porn. Where else will it get all the Large Hardons to collide?

Lucky/Unlucky?

[Afforess]

If they had hacked into a second computer network, they could have turned off parts of the vast detector

So, the only reason they didn't end the world was the flip of a coin in picking which computer to hack?

Look out!

[The Gaytriot]

Combine!

I'm sure they see themselves as freedom fighters.

[AmericanPegasus]

I bet one guy is all like,

"We are the saviors of humanity. It is our destiny to stop the LHC from colliding the first particles. This is not just about access, but about truth and justice and destiny. That machine may cause a black hole. This is the final battle."

And then the other guy is all like,

"Keanu Reeves, wtf are you doing here? lol n00b."

Professor Farnsworth would say...

[Jabbrwokk]

That their IT security team "sucks bosons."

Re:Air gap + Sneakernet

[IgLou]

Dear god, common sense? Can I hire you to run my network? Once I secure funding and a business model I'm sure my Web Cloud 3.0 application will zoom!

Seriously though, it's not just academics; EVERYONE that is a user believes that somehow "poof!" computers should just magically make things easy and perfect. Unless of course they actually work with the technology as opposed to working on the technology.

Re:Why?

[kneemoe]

Because they create so much data from the experiments that they can't keep it in-house. Heck they even have to filter the results on the spot, then send that out to different universities just to 'keep' a fraction of the data. the numbers involved are mind-boggling....

Well, lets hang those sons of bitches

[unity100]

im liberal and geeky and whatnot, however i cant tolerate any piece of shit messing with the most important experiment that is ever conceived.

i do not see those fucktards as members of internet community, or any hat color hacker community.

lets get to their personal data and make their lives a mess.

Why is it connected to the internet?

[Kentaree]

This is the same situation as important government computers being attacked, what were they thinking connecting crucial systems to the internet in the first place?

Re:The correct term

[evanbd]

Hey, tell ya what. I'll pay you a $100 if you play Russian roulette and win.

You're doing it wrong!

[swordgeek]

Tons of people have already pointed out the silliness of having the control system on a publicly accessible computer. With some decent counterarguments, I can still clearly state that they're doing it wrong!"

WTF is it connected to the internet?

[ryanduff]

Why would a system this powerful be connected and accessible from the internet???

What they were really trying to do.

[NoPantsJim]

http://xkcd.com/401/

Nice. Didn't someone write 2012 being "it"

[dk3d]

Ok, so we have a super hadron particle collider creating mini "big bangs" for idiotic scientists to examine where "everything" started from that can be broken into over the internet. And some idiots are thinking it's cool to break into this and potentially create, what? A mini black hole vortex that starts sucking up Europe and then Asia and makes it away across the planet until finally around 2012 (January they say if you read some of those history books) there's nice soft "Pop!" and Hackers, not terrorists, not Nukes or the Russians or Chinese or Americans, not Iran, not Iraq, not Osama, not Obama, not Palin nor Putin nor McCain nor Rhasputin manages to do what no one could do before and never will again, start a new chapter in the Universe called "The Little Bang" Theory. Wonder if CERN is using Macs or PCs?

Dr Evil again!

[David Gerard]

Dr Evil is at work with the Russian Dark Security Market to hold the world to ransom for One Hundred Beelion Dollars!

(Or it's just a large hardon again.)

Re:I'm sure they see themselves as freedom fighter

[Aphoxema]

Whoa.

Air gap and 15 Petabytes of data annually

[fejes]

Ok, I know you want to think that this can be done... but how exactly do you air gap a system that produces 15 Petabytes of data annually and share that data with 100's of labs around the world?

By manual entry, copying this data across the air gap (120wpm) would take:

15,000,000,000,000,000 characters /(120 words/minute * 6 characters/word) = 4*10^7 years.

Even passing that back and forth on hard drives means shutting about (15Pb/365/24 = ) 1.7 Terabytes per hour. (24 hours a day.)

At some point, you have to admit that just connecting this thing to the internet and securing it is the right thing to do.

Re:Air gap and 15 Petabytes of data annually

[Millennium]

Ok, I know you want to think that this can be done... but how exactly do you air gap a system that produces 15 Petabytes of data annually and share that data with 100's of labs around the world?

By accepting that while sharing the data is important, doing it in realtime is not. Run the experiments with an air gap, and once the data collection is finished, then connect the systems for analysis and sharing.

Re:Air gap and 15 Petabytes of data annually

[fejes]

You happen to have a 15PB storage system handy?

Even storing 1 PB isn't easy - which is why it's connected to the internet: for distributed storage.

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=how-lhc-may-change-internet

Re:Air gap and 15 Petabytes of data annually

[conspirator57]

if your control system is that poorly designed that you pass all your data through it and make it publicly accessible, then you deserve the consequences.

*Control* systems ought to be separate from publicly accessible

*Data presentation* systems to the extent possible.

i.e. presentation systems with external availability should take orders from the control system but not communicate back to the control system. If you need data in your control loop, then you make a separate data collection system for that purpose. alternatively, one could get (an) optical network card(s) and only connect the TX fiber(s) on the collection system, thereby making data only flow out into the analysis network.

Re:Air gap and 15 Petabytes of data annually

[Animaether]

The thing is - at least to me - why is 'it' the same machine that has actual control over experiments, and not just a 'dumb' file server that is locked down to do only two things...
1. accept files -from- the machines that monitor the experiments and
2. distribute those files to other machines on the GRID

It shouldn't be accepting connections from outside.. unless you want to make step 2. be "give data to anybody asking for it", but that still shouldn't come anywhere near being able to control anything.

For those saying that 'all big machines like this have outside access for maintenance etc.' - that's great, but that machine doesn't need to be on that GRID, and only a few people need to know where it is and how to access it.

I probably missed some obvious reason that this doesn't appear to be the case, though. Or if it is the case - how they managed to fumble the security.

Re:Air gap and 15 Petabytes of data annually

[fejes]

Unless you have a different definition of securing it, that usually includes taking control interfaces off the web. However, as I argued elsewhere, Setting this up so that data flows out of the network, with no option of getting a resend on packets means no verification.

Would you like to be the person who points out that the packet with the higgs boson failed checksum, and the network was set up so you can't get a reply to a resend?

Don't forget - there's a lot of radiation around the LHC, and random bits could well be flipped in transmission.

Re:Air gap and 15 Petabytes of data annually

[sexconker]

About 42 TB per day. Say 50 TB a day.

Say you want to sneakernet stuff out once per day.

Say you want 5 copies:

In use space
Mirror of in use space
Travelling space
Mirror of traveling space
Internet accessible space

250 TB.
~$140 for one 1 TB drive (with no volume discount).
~$35,000

Wanna store it for 10 days? Mirror everything again? Multiply it by 20 and you get a cost of $700,000.

Throw in $300,000 for implementation and such and training people how to swap some drives every hour and you're sitting at a cool million.
Double it because you want to backup the entire system and someone will mess something up.

How much did the LHC cost? ~$6 billion on the lower estimates? .033% of the cost on the data storage, and backup is pretty reasonable.

Re:Air gap and 15 Petabytes of data annually

[autophile]

15 Petabytes of data? Gosh, that's almost as much as P2P traffic! We... we need to... er... throttle the LHC!

Re:Air gap and 15 Petabytes of data annually

[John Hasler]

There is no need to intermingle the beam controls with the data collection.

And the relatively small amount of ionizing radiation down in the tunnel near the beam tube is certainly not going to affect the computers in the control center on the surface.

Re:Hold on a second...

[Sloppy]

So air gap should be the common-sense default for anything important, huh? I wonder why amazon.com doesn't airgap their web servers.

Re:This begs the question

[supernova_hq]

Yes, sending the data is very important, however I am sure that the sensors used to collect university data are not the same sensors that are used by the control system. Do what-ever you want with the data-collection sensors, but DO NOT connect the bloody control system to the internet. If an airplane can keep the entertainment system separate from the control system, I'm sure the greatest minds in the world can do the same.

yes, yes, I remember the airplane story, no need to bring that up...

Re:Air gap + Sneakernet

[xorbe]

Right, so they send it over the internet instead. No wonder it's been so slow today...

IBM

[conspirator57]

Maybe if IBM had been in the LHC business rather than the computer business in the 70s, they'd have been right to dismiss the personal LHC in favor one or two LHCs worldwide that everyone uses.

or somesuch.

Re:IBM

[Dekker3D]

okay, so i get your story. what would your version of the blue screen of death be if everyone owned their own miniature, supercharged LHC a couple of decades later?

total destruction? i'll take vista over that, thankyouverymuch. no hard feelings thought :)

Re:IBM

[conspirator57]

if i use gentoo on my personal LHC, will i have to build the LHC from quarks? and how will i get through all those package incompatibilities? (i love gentoo, but had to poke fun anyways.)

you idiots!

[krystar]

why are u trying to hack the doomsday machine??!? if u access one wrong file, that'll be the end of the world. do not hack the gibson!

you question the actions of the scientists?

[conspirator57]

remember: everything PhDs do is art. everything. including using their alma mater's mascot name as their password. art, i tell you!

Re:you question the actions of the scientists?

[Medievalist]

remember: everything PhDs do is art. everything. including using their alma mater's mascot name as their password. art, i tell you!

Years ago (when I still worked in science) I got a call from the US military. It seems one of our scientists was attacking one of their systems.

Since the scientist in question was on the other side of the world on a field trip at the time, it seemed likely that someone had compromised his account, and I shut it down.

When I eventually asked the scientist if was using a strong password, he was proud to recite a long dog-latin linnean binomial. It was very difficult to spell or pronounce.

Of course, that was also the first word you saw if you searched for his name on the Internet (using WAIS, since this was before commercial search engines). This particular scientist was the world's foremost authority on the organism with that difficult name, and had published dozens of papers on it.

To put it in modern geek terms, it was like this guy was Bill Gates, his userid was gates, and his password was microsoft.

The idea that criminal hackers might actually look up his name came as a total surprise to this world-famous scientist with multiple PhDs...

Re:you question the actions of the scientists?

[KGIII]

Being brilliant in one field doesn't mean even a layman's ability in a different area of specialty. Me? I can't even fix my car. Turns out I don't even know where the starter is. Well, no... I do now - it's the shiny new piece of equipment under the hood.

Re:you question the actions of the scientists?

[Anonymous Coward]

Guy who used to live near me was an engineer who had worked for a major aerospace company, worked on the Space Shuttle among other things. Guy endlessly fixed his own car (if you'd have known his wife you'd understand why.)

Yet he was unable to properly insert an ink cartridge into his ink-jet printer.

Re:you question the actions of the scientists?

[Geoff]

Don't you know it.

Several years ago, I was working on tightening up our password system in a university department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (i.e. people who should definitely know better).

I was running crack on our userbase, to identify users with weak passwords so we could require them to change their password. One of the options was to look for passwords in .signature files. It seemed really silly to me. Who would be foolish enough to put his/her password in his/her email signature?

One of the first hits (right after someone with "password", I think) was a signature hit. It turns out, it was indeed one of our Ph.D. professors who did indeed have his password in his .signature file.

How? The password was his ham radio call sign, which, of course, he proudly listed in his email signature.....

Re:Air gap + Sneakernet

[Bou]

Each of the 4 experiments at CERN will generate about 1 PB of raw data per year. Add analyzed data, backups, etc. and you need about 10PB of accessible storage.

I suggest you invent a portable internet.

in a perfect world

[conspirator57]

Grid computing for data analysis and control system *should be* two different things.

we want one interface. for each interface i find on this LHC, i will kill you.

its not just zeros

[someone1234]

It is many zeros with an 1 in the beginning.

Re:This begs the question

[Anonymous Coward]

Because the experts on each experiments cannot be running LHC 24/7.
Most of the times, each experiments are operated by small shift crews. When they see a problem that they cannot solve themselves, they would call the expert on that particular system.
Then, the expert would remote login and make the adjustments necessary. Therefore, the Internet connectivity is important.

Re:This begs the question

[BronsCon]

At least it's not a deadbeat, providing only some DNA for the question. It's doing the right thing and staying around to raise it.

Re:Computer security rocket science

[verbamour]

PROTONS!

I thought they were pr0nons! Now you see why I had to be on the web and then my mother-in-law sent me this greeting card with an animated snowglobe, but then this pop-up window said that I had some malware, so I had to download the cleaner and...

sploit

[Anonymous Coward]

SL is based off of Redhat?? I think so. Maybe the hacksters got in with that latest secret exploit?

CERtaiN DOOM!!!!!

[PortHaven]

Be afraid, be very afraid....

(That said the LHC has already led to the discovery of a new subatomic particle that is related to the transmission of fear. Scientists have called this new particle the Cern-Phobic Particle

Re:CERtaiN DOOM!!!!!

[mikiN]

Strange (no pun intended), I always thought that the particle was a fearmion.

Re:CERtaiN DOOM!!!!!

[mikiN]

Come to think of it, it can't be a fearmion, for fearmions constitute the dark matter of the imagination. As a carrier of emotion it must obviously be a bogon.

Re:This begs the question

[conspirator57]

http://begthequestion.info/

Re:This begs the question

[Kent Recal]

Oh, cool, they get to remote control the LHC, with webcam and everything?

Don't think so. Experiments involving the LHC probably require quite a bit of preparation and I doubt they can be pulled off without hands-on assistance by the on-site technicians ("Plug it in, Bob!").

Thus my conclusion would be that someone simply didn't do his homework with regard to network security here.
There is no excuse for connecting the controlling terminal of a billion dollar device to the internet. If that really was the case then someone should be fired and banned from his profession for life. TFA lacks details in terms of "what could have happened" but I think it's not too far fetched to assume that at least some very expensive gear could have been damaged (or decalibrated) by futzing a few knobs to eleven.

And no, there is no sane reason why any remote site needs any kind of access to the LHC controls. It's not that hard to setup a true one-way datapath for exporting results to universities and such. If some experiments require near realtime adjustments to the LHC settings then that could (and should) be wrapped up in a very limited, temporary interface.

Confucius Say

[Profane MuthaFucka]

Confucius Say "large toroidal machine always have security hole in middle."

The software is Open Source.

[jd]

If you think there's bugs in the security, you are able to fix it. That's the brilliant thing about Open Source. We don't have to just complain, we can actually send them the necessary patches. Now, the lack of publicity regarding the source is a concern. If Arthur Dent found getting the demolition plans for his house was bad, the notices regarding what software is available and where from are even worse.

They've had TWENTY YEARS to circulate the designs, prototypes and implementations. Yes, there are fewer software engineers interested in high-energy physics than there are software engineers into bomb-proofing OpenBSD, but if you don't tell any of them what's out there, it wouldn't matter if it was one coder or a million. You can't fix what you don't know exists to fix.

These control systems are mission-critical. The particle stream can't do "extensive" damage, but it can write-off the magnets, and those are multi-million-dollar toys. It could also shut down the accelerator for years, if a hacker goes drilling holes in the mountainside. (The hole would be small, but politicians aren't interested in paying for high-energy landscaping, and CERN isn't infinitely rich.)

Ignoring for a moment that the front-line defenses should have kept intruders out (though I'll bet that they're not using IPSec VPNs, they've got firewall holes for rsh and rlogin, and use .hosts files everywhere), the bulk of grid-enabled software these days can use Kerberos V or SAML 2.0 for security. They're probably not doing anything remotely that's time-critical so an in-line active intrusion detection and countermeasures system (there's plenty of them) could have been installed. Those cost a damn sight less than the detector array.

Since they were worried about someone getting onto an internal network, they must also believe that shell access was possible, so this isn't simply a matter of someone being able to ping a machine or SNMP query a server. This was a case of CERN violating some very serious standard protocols for ensuring code safety and system safety.

The "open secret" mentality, though, is probably the most dangerous part, though. By making the source available but not telling anyone, it is most available to those of malicious intent. Obscurity is not security, guys! That includes obscuring your announcements, it's not confined to merely obscuring the code itself. If you're going to release source (which is a Good Thing), you want to broadcast that fact to as WIDE an audience as possible. (In fact, if it's network-related, WIDE would be a good place to start announcing.) Get ALL the eyes you possibly can onto that code, for a comprehensive, rigorous audit. And if you're worried you can't get enough eyes, use static code checkers and test harnesses. Bet you anything none of the coders for the LHC have been using such resources beyond a superficial level, if at all.

All in all, I am impressed by the fact that the code is out there, and can be fixed, but I am NOT impressed with the secrecy mentality that created this utterly unnecessary security fiasco. If I'd wanted my tax money to go into security holes, I'd have paid Group Four to build the LHC. I want INTELLIGENT people to be doing the work.

Re:Hold on a second...

[Kent Recal]

It is the common-sense default for anything important that doesn't legitimately *need* to be accessed from the internet.
Amazon doesn't airgap their webservers because their sole purpose is to serve content to the internet.

From all I have read I would think the LHC has a different purpose. One that doesn't require internet access, too.

Publicly accessible?

[raind]

Without RTFA why would this be even on the public net? Inside job?

Re:Air gap + Sneakernet

[andreyvul]

They can send grad students over the internet?

Re:The correct term

[zappepcs]

Nicely played... here's the thing though, I don't believe in the afterlife thing. I'm not worried, the universe sends us enough particles crashing through the earth every day to dismiss any fear that the LHC will create a black hole that swallows the planet. We've even had gamma rays blasted right at us (more or less) and survived. There is evidence to show that particle bombardment is what actually causes lightning strikes. This shit happens ALL the time, but in uncontrolled circumstances. The LHC is just doing it in laboratory conditions, and that is a GoodThing!(TM)

The people who are afraid seem to mostly be those that should be glad to finally meet their maker. This is why I'm cynical about the whole thing. Your proposition, as good as it sounds, is one I will have to turn down. I'll just wager you that another 2 people kill themselves worrying about the LHC causing the end of life as we know it (jim).

I don't need no stinking forklift

[camperdave]

Bow to my might! Tremble before my awesome power, for I can move a 100GB drive with my bare hands.

Re:I don't need no stinking forklift

[Zibri]

So? I can move a terabyte with mine. Er, scratch that, 3,5" SATA disks are heavy these days.

Re:I don't need no stinking forklift

[Anonymous Coward]

I can move a 100GB drive without using either of my hands, provided I don't cough.

Re:I don't need no stinking forklift

[sexconker]

Micro SDs don't come in that capacity yet.

Re:I don't need no stinking forklift

[Pseudonym]

Congratulations, you've just been hired. Your job: Move something from A to B every four minutes. We agreed on 10 cents per hour, right?

Re:I don't need no stinking forklift

[Tubal-Cain]

I know we geeks don't exercise much, but if you've atrophied that badly, you might want to consider doing something about it. Maybe you should buy a heavier mouse.

Re:I don't need no stinking forklift

[access.name]

meh! I can lift 50 libraries of congress with my bare hands!

Re:Air gap + Sneakernet

[maxume]

So are mopeds.

Meaning of the Hacker's text

[arigram]

If you're interested to know, the text the hackers left is a childish rant against others that they claim pretend to be l33t but are not unlike them. Pretty stereotypical hacker/cracker message since the dawn of machines. Probably every hacking group in history has written such a message claiming superiority over lazy, unskilled pretenders. It actually has nothing to do with the LHC. The only reason they hacked this site was because as they state was going to be popular, thus a good place to advertise their rant and group.

Re:Air gap + Sneakernet

[ndsbriand]

This thing will generate 28000 TB of data per hour!

Not to start a pissing contest over how much data the LHC will produce, but I got this directly off of the CERN web site:

The Large Hadron Collider will produce roughly 15 petabytes (15 million gigabytes) of data annually - enough to fill more than 1.7 million dual-layer DVDs a year!

That is closer to 1.7 TB per hour.

Greek Hackers (Redundant)

[Trojan35]

Greek Hackers? What is this, Revenge of the Jocks?

MOD PARENT UP

[Sabz5150]

I agree 100%. This is one of the largest and most expensive scientific endeavors in human history, capable of providing answers to some of the greatest questions in science. This thing has taken over twenty years, billions of dollars and countless man hours to design, build and prepare for these experiments. The LAST thing we need are you jackholes screwing it up.

Re:This begs the question

[KGIII]

After the WWW began, very shortly after, in its current form there was a site that I could visit. I have long since forgotten the name of the site or even the college where it was based at.

Basically you could go there and chuck a snowball using a robotic arm and your browser. (Netscape at the time as I recall.) These were lab workers that you could toss 'em at.

I never actually hit anyone with one because (my excuse at any rate) the latency was awful and those days meant that I had just a 14.4 modem as I recall.

I am not actually sure what that has to do with the topic at hand but when you mentioned people being able to remotely control the LHC that is what it reminded me of.

Aristotles Revenge

[piemcfly]

I just KNEW these damned Greek Aristotelians with their 4-elements theories wouldn't let it go.
2300 years later and they STILL carry a grudge against atomic theories.

Can't you just let it go guys? We're not made up out of earth, wind, fire and air. Not even if you succeed at blowing the LHC to Hades.

Re:Aristotles Revenge

[ntipouan]

Hohoho.

But wait. Hm, four elements?
It reminds me of the four basic forces of
modern physics (or fields if you will).

Aristotles revenge? xD

Re:Air gap + Sneakernet

[domanova]

Data is generated at a huge rate, then filtered by smart fast analysis at various levels. Possibly both numbers are right - 4 orders of magnitude of realtime rejection before you write the rest to media.
What you do write is mostly rubbish, and (one) of the clever things to do is not to junk the good stuff during your realtime
I don't work on LHC (I went to the wrong one, SSC) but those ratios seem OK from my time on SPS (now the LHC injector)
The ratios don't change, but the numbers do - the SPS control system ran with a main winchester of 70 megabytes, the size of a washing machine, which would occasionally go walkabout when the head crashed. Shows how ancient I am

Sad...

[CFBMoo1]

Because if they do jack around with the thing and cause it to malfunction some how they could end up causing the very thing they try to stop. Ah well, that would suck for them and us.

no VPN??

[phaetonic]

my guess is they have people working remotely, probably worldwide, and do not have a high enough security process in place.

CMS != LHC

[cuantar]

I don't know if anyone has pointed this out yet, but if so, it bears saying again: the control system in question belongs to the CMS detector, not to the LHC. These are two entirely different beasts.

In translation...

[mjc82]

A quick translation (just for the record):

10/09/08 03:00

At this moment, an experiment is being attempted at CERN.

The reason we selected this page is in order to remind you of a few things. It hasn't been done because of some personal rivalry with the CERN admin team but purely based on the large amount of traffic that this particular web site will have in the next 24 hours because of the experiment.

A few details from the database:
...
The ** have been used so as not to compromise people we have nothing against :)

As we wrote in our introduction we do not intend to break the system or destroy the site... our purpose is to demonstrate our active reaction to many of the members of the "active???" GHS [Greek Hacker S...??] which has become very full of itself without contributing anything ...

Pointless cliques form to merely squabble verbally or to ban from irc channels individuals which are not considered (by themselves and their lackeys) worthy of their knowledge and image.

Others... the "scene's" 1337 [leet], know only how to talk and chat and don't actually do anything since their leaning is towards gossip...but as far as "security" is concerned... what is this?? We are 2600... don't mess with us.

Ignorant and up themselves!

Stop blowing hot air up your asses and sucking up and take hold of a keyboard! But of course, criticizing is easy, especially when you are surrounded by 20year old silly skiddies [script kiddies?] twittering "2600" - "2600". Get stuck into insomnia.gr and start scorning us with your best scowls... simply know that even there you will find GST's tag.

We are everywhere... because unlike you, we don't spend our nights writing rhymes and rapping in the hood... nor do we make fun of that which we ourselves cannot achieve...

We are not making laughing stocks of you because we want to see you running around like headless chickens with your pants down looking for somewhere to hide but simply because we are not like you. You should have expected this response when you ridiculed things which you yourselves had not thought to do... but we've concerned ourselves far too long with a bunch of schoolkids who learnt hacking from Hollywood movies and the stupid American culture of the neo-geek who spends his time reading hacking magazines while trying to crack his girlfriend's email to see if she's cheating on him, and who's dual booting linux just to impress his friends who also read neo-hack-mania magazines..

The entire greek network has holes in it... some of the biggest government sites don't even know the definition of the word security...
they get incompetent companies to do the design...

Satisfying political favours can't give you security

We are everywhere...

We salute the true amateurs and lovers of computer tech. A few of the old school who got sick and tired not of the art but of the egos of the "specialists" in the field! And the new generation who without saying much put their heads down to work because they are only concerned with gaining knowledge and nothing else!!

Greek Security Team

Re:In translation...

[mjc82]

Just to clarify I am not a part of any "hacker team" let alone GST. Just bored at 1am on a Friday night!

Re:In translation...

[mjc82]

I just saw the last paragraph:

Dear admins at CERN we closed the serious BUG which this page had so that it isn't transformed into a Dork and is defaced on a daily basis with the ramblings of every wannabe hacker.

Don't search for us... we'll find you... very soon!!!!

"One way" bus

[CustomDesigned]

I worked on a secure Air Force system with similar security requirements. The secure data analysis system was locked in a steel vault with armed soldiers, alarms, and likely more stuff I had no need to know about, but had a high bandwidth mainframe channel to the outside world - that was "one way" (into the vault). The reverse handshaking data needed for reliable transfer was strictly limited. I could take any sort of media into the vault for my job - but had to leave it all there when I left. (There was a secure disposal detail that I never got to see.)

The LHC is in a similar security situation, except the one way bus should go *out* of the control computers. But I guess data has to go *in* to setup the experiments, so that makes things more difficult.

Re:"One way" bus

[John Hasler]

Data has to go in to the computers that control the detectors but it does not need to go into the computers that control the beam. I suspect that it doesn't.

white-hat hackers

[vrypan]

It looks like this was not a malicious attack. From what I read (I'm greek), they did not do any damage, and they fixed a serous bug :-)

More details here: http://vrypan.net/log/2008/09/13/hackers-attack-lhc-some-more-details/

Re:Air gap + Sneakernet

[mikiN]

As far as I know, information flows out of CERN in high volume, and not in.

Stop Press! This just in: The LHC is going to create a white hole, not a black one! We need to run a special edition ASAP!

step 1

[Bizzeh]

logical first step... dont allow any of this to be accessed via the internet...

Misleading Telegraph

[hairykrishna]

The two key sentances of the article are:

"If they had hacked into a second computer network, they could have turned off parts of the vast detector "

"We have several levels of network, a general access network and a much tighter network for sensitive things that operate the LHC," said Gillies.

Basically they defaced a web page which is hosted on a server which is nothing to do with the LHC control network. Haven't we had enough ridiculous LHC scare stories yet?

Not even a VPN?

[generica1]

Wouldn't a VPN tunnel type of connection solve this problem? They wouldn't need secured leased lines then. SSH FTW!

Re:Not even a VPN?

[databeast]

yeah, because there has NEVER been an SSH exploit or man-in-the-middle attack. EVER.

Re:Not even a VPN?

[generica1]

What about IPSec then?

I wonder...

[xactuary]

If they didn't want the collider penetrated, then why make it look like a vagina?

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

So that anyone can create a black holes?

[celtic_hackr]

Those science types are big on open source, so what better way than to open up big matter sucking openings and allowing everyone equal access to the ability to destroy all life on Earth? I mean let's be fair haven't you ever wanted to open up a black hole under someone? Don't you ever get the need to just wipe out existence and start over?

Maybe they can add a teleporter to the collider so we can create black holes there and send them elsewhere?

English Translation

[christose]

GST
GREEK SECURITY TEAM
10/09/08 03:00

At this time, an experiment is taking place at CERN.

The reason we chose [to hack] this site, is to remind you of a few things. This is not done because of any personal conflict between us and the CERN management team, but because of the high traffic which this site will experience within the next 24 hours, due to the experiment.

Some items from the database:

USERNAME USER_ID CREATED
SYS 0 2008-02-18 16:19:25.0
SYSTEM 5 2008-02-18 16:19:25.0
OUTLN 11 2008-02-18 16:19:28.0
DIP 19 2008-02-18 16:21:17.0
TSMSYS 21 2008-02-18 16:23:27.0
DBSNMP 24 2008-02-18 16:24:25.0
WMSYS 25 2008-02-18 16:24:53.0
EXFSYS 34 2008-02-18 16:27:55.0
XDB 35 2008-02-18 16:28:04.0
PDB_ADMIN 46 2008-02-18 17:26:32.0
GLEGE 49 2008-02-19 10:13:07.0
PDBMON 45 2008-02-18 17:25:24.0
BALYS 44 2008-02-18 17:25:24.0
USERMON 48 2008-02-18 17:69:26.0 ..etc...etc....

Some emails :
burk**t@fnal.gov
zr**n@fnal.gov

The ** were used not to expose people whom we have nothing to blame for :)

As we wrote in preface, our purpose is not to disrupt the system or destroy the site ... our purpose is to show our reaction to many member of the "active???" GHS, which has become arrogant without producing ...

Stupid factions are created just to verbally bully and excluse, from IRC channels, persons
that are not considered (by themselves and their minions) worthy of their knowledge and image.

Some others .. the 1337 of the "scene" do nothing but chat and drink coffe, but they do not act, since all they are inclined to do is gossip ... but when it comes to "security" ... what's that? we are 2700 .. dont mess with us.

LAMERS AND SHOWOFFS!!

Stop drooling and ass-kissing, and grab a keyboard! But of course, critisizing is easy, especially when you are around a bunch of 20 year-old stupid skiddies chanting "2600" - "2600". Go to insomnia.gr and start burying with your best shovel .. even so, it will bare the seal of GST.

We are everywhere... because unlike you, we do not spend our nights writting verses or "rapping" in squares ... nor mocking what we cannot touch ...

We will not take your pants off because we don't want to see you running panicked and naked, trying to hide, simply because we are not like you. You should have expected this, when you were mocking things which you never thought of doing ... but enough time spent with a bunch of schoolboys who've learned hacking through
Hollywood movies and the dumb American culture of neo-geek who reads magasines about hacking while trying to break into his girlfriend's email to see if she is cheating on him, and has linux dual boot just to awe his friends who, too, read neo-hack-mania magasines. .

The whole Greek internet is full of wholes .. some of the largest govenrmental sites know nothing about the term security,
since they assign design to lame companies...

THERE IS NO SECURITY THROUGH FAVORITISM

We salute the true amateurs and lovers of the art of computers. Old people who gave up
because they got bored and tired not with this art, but with the complex of those "experts" in the area!! And the younger ones who without much talk work with the head bowed because they only care about knowledge and nothing else!!

Dear CERN admins, we have pached the serious BUG which your site had, to avoid turning it into a Dork and have it decafed everyday with the bullshit of every wannabe hacker.

Do not search for us.. We will find you... very soon !!!!

Thnx Mr Server [lxplus.cern.ch]

_GreekSecurityTeam_ - [.GST.]

Summary of greek text on page

[Ian-K]

Hi there,

I'm greek and here's a summary of what the hacked page contains:

They did it to shut the mouths of some people who thought they were incompetent. They have nothing against the CERN team and what they do, they just wanted a high-profile page. ("Like we wrote, we have no intention of damaging the system or ruining the site ... our intention is to demonstrate (a) practical response to some "active" members of the GHS who have their noses stuck to the roof without contributing anything")

The main body contains messages to ppl who call them names and prefer style to substance. They salute true amateurs (hackers I presume) and all fellow geeks and some old hats that quit because they got tired of all the 1337ness of the "field experts". They also salute all the young ppl who -without much talking- put their head down to work, because what they care about is knowledge and only that.

The last line is translated as is:
Dear admins at CERN, we closed a very serious BUG that your page had so that it does not become a DORK and you become defaced every single day by the (stupid) actions of every wannabe hacker. Don't look for us, we'll find you real soon.

Re:Computer security rocket science

[bentob0x]

You're such a masturbating monkey ...

umm

[revxul]

Will someone please tell me why a system used to control the LHC is connected to the outside world?

"While we wait for it to warm up, lets raid Molten Core!"

Re:Air gap + Sneakernet

[spazdor]

Information flows both in and out of a star.

Theoretically, information from our universe should never be able to penetrate the event horizon to the interior of a white hole.

Some facts from the screenshot

[MadCatMk2]

I'm Greek, so let me state a few things: From the screenshot here http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/graphics/2008/09/12/scicern212_big.gif it is more than clear that they are Greeks due to various references to their beliefs about certain "trends" and websites. The also state that they had no intention of causing any real trouble (Notice the **'s at the mails etc) and that they were only there to warn the admins as the site was going to get a lot more popular the following days. After an awful lot of babbling, in the end of the message, they also state that they _fixed a bug_ that could enable all the wannabes to deface the site. PS: It's 1AM here so I'm really sorry for not being able to read all the comments that have been made so far.

Re:Some facts from the screenshot

[ntipouan]

It's funny how things evolve in time. The hackers didn't intend to reveal the persons behind the emails, but the one who gave this screenshot to the press was a bit careless:

Notice the url:

"http://cmsmon.cern.ch/zrwan/apanthsh.html"

And the email:

zr**n@fnal.gov.

Also, I should mention that someone who claims to be a hacker, and is trying to draw the attention
of the media upon to himself, should write his "reply" in a flawless language. That's even more
important if you choose to use your mother language.

I mean, what hell of a hacker are you if you can't spell correct your mother tongue?
If you can't it means two things. Either you don't care for details, or you don't care for details.
And as far as I know, that's not good, if you're into computers.

-
Errors noticed:
-

1.Ayth thn wra ginet*e* ...
2.Xw8eite sto insomnia.gr kai arxisete na 8avet*ai* ...
3. ...wste na mhn metatrapei se Dork kai ginet*e* ...

I'm sorry for the use of greeklish, but greek characters could not be displayed.

Nevertheless, I agree with most of what they've said, and if it is true that the site had a hole
that was fixed, well done boys(+girls). Just use a spellchecking program next time:).

Why in is it linked to the net?

[Criton]

Why in the hell is something like this linked to the internet are they crazy? Thats just stupid from a security stand point to have the control computers linked to the internet now days it's not like how it was in the 70s and 80s. If I was running the program I would so fire the person who setup the computers as that was a colossal f--k up bigger then the LHC it's self.

Re:Why in is it linked to the net?

[ntipouan]

Your question has been already answered.

Learn to read the previous comments...
It will save you time and energy.

musing

[docwatson223]

I wonder if that is what *really* happened to Gordon Freeman's experiment?

Re:The correct term

[Walter Carver]

You don't have to be religious to be afraid.