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Virus Infection Hits UK's Ministry of Defense, Including Warships
Retrovirus writes with a link to a Register story which says that the UK's "Ministry of Defence confirmed today that it has suffered virus infections which have shut down 'a small number' of MoD systems, most notably including admin networks aboard Royal Navy warships."
Somebody sunk their Battleship.
Wasn't it big news about a year ago that the UK Navy were switching to Windows?
Yeah, here it is:
http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08%2F12%2F18%2F006226&from=rss
Slashdot article from December 18 2008
One more reason to use Linux: "Your country's security depends on it."
I'm surprised something as crucial as Defence systems are running a version of Windows.
All your base are belong to "someone other than yourselves"
it wasn't a virus - it was a bug. a beatle, technically.
It would be much more newsworthy if it was a bacterial infection.
A warship-eating bacteria.
You could so do a Steven Seagal movie with that premise.
it means a true l33t cracker could easily start World War III?
- Human knowledge belongs to the world
I'm not currently allowed to do security-cleared work in UK, because I've just spent several years living in that hotbed of communism and espionage, New Zealand. Pity the MoD don't take such a rigorous approach to basic IT competence.
"It doesn't cost enough, and it makes too much sense."
It marked the end of the era of the battleship.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Prince_of_Wales_(1939)
--- Thousands are enslaved every day.
Of course they went to Windows: /var/log/messages"
Clicking Torpedo and then the enemy's battleship on a screen is much more efficient than typing
"attack --weapon torpedo --count 2 --coords 42394799879x3179478912"
and then waiting for the result in
"tail -f
mov ax,4c00h
int 21h
http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=20081228
Exactly. I'm surprise those computers got infected with Windows in the first place. Usually it takes a CD to spread that virus.
ITV News was stating it was also effecting 6 RAF admin bases as well and they outbreak has been running since well before Christmas. All of this hear-say as the MOD (rightly IMHO) are keeping alot of this info to themselves.
Also no signs of how the malware got into the systems, accidently or a deliverate 'attack'.
given the time to clear up and the large number of systems it's compromised it's a little worrying to the least.
now that everyone knows this account is fake, could you stop using it?
at least to show some respect to the man who passed away so recently
Wow, it really must be the 21st century. For millennia, when navies had problems with viruses, it was the sailors being a little too loose while on shore leave. Today, the ships are the ones getting infected due to open ports.
it means a true l33t cracker could easily start World War III?
A true l33t cracker would NEVER engage an enemy with something as petty as violence or death...
He or She would realize that only escalates and encourages fear, he or she would engage the world with words.
One of the worlds most admirable and effective Social Engineers said: "There are many causes that I am prepared to die for but no causes that I am prepared to kill for."
A Man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties -- Albert Einstein
I find this quite funny, 29 days into migration (rollout included) and the poor machines are already infected.
What is not so funny is that the MoD people are such muppets for taking that sort of decision on such critical systems!
Still a question remains. If the contract was given to Fujitsu should they not be held accountable as well, along with the MoD ?
Admiral Adama never would have let that happen on his ship.
Too... many... Clippy... jokes. Must not regurgitate... tired Slashdot... meme.
If the MoD needs to cut expenses by using standard PC components rather than custom hardware, should they not be using FreeBSD, OpenBSD or some esoteric form of *nix installed on encrypted hdds with with hardened FS ACLs, properly defined jails and allowing only dual layer VPNs over IPSec ?
Maybe they are relying on the power of the thin-foil hat ...
Well, its blindingly obvious that the Royal Navy is worth zilch and run by nincompoops and incompetents since July 31st 1970, 6 bells of the forenoon watch. That was when the last rum ration was issued.
So the move to use Microsoft Windows and the subsequent(and consequent) series of disasters associated with such an abysmal piece of software does not strike on as "odd" with the same rear-admirals (which probably carry the word "rear-" in front of their title in order to find their posteriors) who had risen up their ranks without their daily rum ration.
It should have been clear in 1970 that the Navy which ruled the waves for 200 years wouldn't take something like having their rum taken away lightly; and that most probably their best sailors and officers would turn away in disgust of such a move, leaving only the incompetent and spineless to run and ruin the Navy. And in recent times, leaving a software company from the USA to ruin the Navy. Perhaps they realised the case was hopeless and retired to a half-pay life of binge-drinking; at least they could have their rum on shore, to drown their shame in.
Such a sad state.
"The more prohibitions there are, The poorer the people will be" -- Lao Tse
Windows is the right os for the war ships. It's good if there's problems with weapons & other war stuff. It gives them bad image and maybe there'll be a little less weapons & funding then.
And if we don't count what happens in movies, it's rare computer bugs kills civilians. Mechanical failures are a different thing:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8J5PWIgRSOM
Ville / Varuste.net
no where did it say it was windows, in fact it says the mail servers were supplied by Fujitsu so it's most likely linux. so all you retards crowing about windows being insecure should eat your words.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
:facepalm:
"We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams [...]."
I was at a Linux Worldexpo in London several years ago when someone from the audience piped up about Windows on warships during the Great Linux Debate dinnertime session. I think he was a journalist from a Computing publication, but this was exactly the scenario he painted back then.
Ever wish your computer was as secure as a battleship? Now it is.
Since the britons installed Windows, every sunday, late at night, pirates in the Irish sea have remoted their ships to a buccaneer's den on the Isle of Man.
Is it beyond credulity that this is a test-scenario implemented on a boat at sea to see how a disruption might manifest itself?
Just look at the guy doing their IT. "Sometimes I just switch it off and on again, heh heh." Sounds like Windows to me.
they can no longer clear shipping lanes, since they lost the minesweeper app
Didn't we learn from Battlestar Galactica not to network computers on a warship? God help us if Britain is invaded by Cylons...
first went down to prevent the Brits from making money on the day of the announcement of $700bn package
google "lse sql server sjvn"
Now the Navy!
Micro$oft! Way to go!
Darth Sidious to Count Dooku:
"Healthcare?"
"Done."
"Stock Exchange?"
"Done."
"Navy?"
"Done."
"Haw Haw Haw. Good work...."
Has Brown outsourced the Grand Orwellian Screwup to M$ or is US planning something?
Ho Humm ..
Well it seems that the MOD's belief in ol billy boy has crapped on them once again , Thing that gets me is just how much they ARE hiding , how much of the true infrastructure is ACTUALLY infected i would not mind betting a lot more than they are admitting to .
If things suddenly start going boom and bang and similar in the night we will know that it is complete system wide not just the email system as they are claiming
I dont know about the Norton 30 day trial i think they have signed up with Norton the biggest con job on the planet when i ran windBloWs for work i found Norton to be an absolute waste of time money and disc space it let so much in it was untrue AVG free kicked it well into touch
Not anonymous just sick of the crabby mods on here
they need a reality check
Armies battling computer viruses at least don't engage in other kinds of warfare. Let's keep it that way.
find /sea -iname '*enemy*' | xargs attack --weapon torpedo --count 2
This is all just my personal opinion.
All the computers had MS Antivirus 2009 installed on them...and they still got infected with a virus!
Doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy justice, universities destroy knowledge, religion destroys spirituality
I understand. They're afraid you'd put on a ring and "rule them all".
Hey maybe Mark can get a Business Plan together for them.
Otherwise they need to consult with Volkerding about a inhouse solution.
Insightful, informative... whatever. Both are on the money.
Although... I must say - he sounds more like a just plain old non-OS related idiot.
That he-heh-heh giggle is a dead giveaway.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
"A ship in harbor is safe, but that is not what ships were built for. Go out and get infested."
(Sorry, Admiral Hopper. Just can't help...)
Colorless green Cthulhu waits dreaming furiously.
If all armies in the world switched to Windows we would have world peace.....
My father (Navy 1940-1948), like all other officers, got whisky. This is why people went for commissions. Therefore, if half pay officers had still existed, they wouldn't be drinking rum.
The other side of this was my cousin, a Methodist lay preacher, who turned down a commission because "officers drink too much."
The post is misleading. The article is talking about a COMPUTER virus, which is not the same as a virus.
Everybody likes to play the ultimate geek now and then, but let's not forget the proper use of the word "virus" is only about living organisms.
Catalin Braescu
Ofaly.com
The MoD insisted that no command or operational systems had been affected, though many of these are based on similar hardware.
Hardware?
Great Britain government is just mad about security. They're now setting up an email and calls government registry to save all data for more than a year, from everybody.
They also have security cameras all arround the country. I've been in London, and it's more likely a giant great brother, since you step out of your home and until you come in again, you're continiously being taped. Some areas of the city even have the same street taped from every possible angle light posts, semaphors and walls allow them to.
I expect that moving military to windows is some kind of movement like: "Hey people they've just hacked our army, we have to empower security a bit further!".
What a poor thing, government little by little, almost everywhere in europe and USA, is trying to take power from law to empower themselves, breaking this way the power division of democracy. We're just approaching at max. speed to 1984.
Maybe its just me but if I had written a piece of software that caused as much trouble as this has to an organization that includes the SBS ( Special Boat Service a.k.a. SAS on the water) I'd probably be packing and looking for alternate everything.
Wasn't that a movie about a virus in England? This seems a bit more frightening.
One ring to bind them - should probably have more fiber and less rings in their diet.
While sailors are at battle stations, sailor IT admins are fighting the viruses on their windows boxens.
ROFTL
Bill Gates a terrorist, it's more likely than you think.
I am the unwilling control for my Origin.
Windows has *real* security problems. We are not talking about mere differences in opinion, but real-live security problems from the ground-up. We are talking about a systemic philosophy within Microsoft that allows things like the TIFF code to execute binary programs, privilege escalation, and so on.
The Windows apologists like to claim that there are so many exploits only because Windows is so "popular." It isn't true. Windows is insecure by design. Microsoft intentionally installs APIs through which the system can be modified regardless of the user. On top of that, the kernel device driver model is less regulated than unix.
Windows is a security disaster, and while it is dangerous enough in a consumer setting. It is a stunningly bad idea to put it in a secure situation.
I know that it is stylish to a) not read the article, b) ignore any facts, and c) slag MS (even when they are not involved), but is it too much to ask to at least read the HEADLINE to the article? You know, where they say
Only until you install the disintegration chambers.
No good deed goes unpunished. - Avon, Blake's 7
Oh shit! Imminent Cylon attack
If the virus is designed to relay information, the admin systems on the US naval ships have loads of information that can be used about the crew as well as manuals, designs, etc. The real problem is that this would not be enough to force the navy to change behavior and put in a secure OS. BUT if this HAD hit the operating OS, then most likely the navies would re-think being dependent on such a weak OS. I am guessing that the same is true of UK.
They should install that version on Unix seen in Jurassic Park. I'm STILL waiting for that awesome OS to be released to the general public. I guess it's ahead of it's time. :(
http://i.cubeupload.com/T6cyLu.png
You would not be surprised to know that many of the procurement people in the MOD are not and have never been in the Armed Forces, and are widely hated by serving personnel. After the Falklands War, it was identified that the MOD had failed to provide the Army with, for root's sake, adequate socks. I remember one officer remarking that the MOD would now have a Project Manager, Socks. To which someone else replied that this was incorrect; they would need two: Project Manager, Socks, Left and Project Manager, Socks, Right.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
.. not Defense!
That Windows running submarine suddenly not so funny.
"I'm looking at this post, five mod points ready to go,"
Do you realize that you are not allowed to post and moderate on the same article? If you did, any mod points you use on this article have been wasted.
The crystals and incense folk call this, "Mercury Retrograde", and in the case of Astrology, they're actually on fairly firm ground.
Communications and technology become jumbled and fragile in these periods. Global slowdowns and best laid plans going to pot.
Watch the patterns. One of my favorites was when those 5 undersea cables got cut and the world flipped out.
Happens twice a year for about twenty days each period. Back up your stuff before these times hit. Or just yell until you're blue, "Correlation does not equal causation!" --Which is actually quite true. Mercury isn't out there with bolt cutters. It's just a means of measuring the weather patterns of reality. This period ends Feb 1st. It's generally a good idea to hold off on signing anything important or buying any new hardware until after that date.
It's not just radioactive isotopes wobbling in their decay rates in time with the Earth's orbit. Everything is affected. --There are fundamentals of matter and energy, from which consciousness arises, which are not yet properly understood by modern science, and so we have to rely on the old-wive's rosemary-smelling almanacs for guidance. I suspect if the scientific community ever got over it's understandable knee-jerk over-reaction to the stupidity of religion and actually managed to work out the mechanics behind the observations, we'd zoom ahead by lightyears in our understanding of physics.
But the problem is that the "Must Not Offend Popular Consensus Even if it's Wrong" instinct affects scientists and laymen alike.
Ah well. We'll get there one day. I hope.
Cheers!
-FL
In WWII Japanese troop strength was determined by tracking logistics. Judging the amount of water requested delivered to islands allowed the allies to determine troop levels on those islands.
There are no non-critical systems in war time.
Brace yourself for my 2009-01-19 I-told-you-so!
I can't be the only person who saw the words, UK infection, Ministry of Defense and thought it was gonna be a Zombie invasion.
GCS/S d-x s+(+): a C++++$ UL+$ P+ L++$ !E--- W++@ N++>$ !o !K-- w++$ !O !M !V PS++>$ PE !Y PGP+ t+ 5++ X++ R tv b
I mean seriously, what could sailors be downloading that could be dangerous to windows machines?
It's the other way around, trust me. When you hit 40 and Mom hollers down to come up for your birthday party, it's like, "Oh, man am I getting old. That year just flew by."
This is more common than you might think. The US Embassies just had a similar bout with virii. I wouldn't be surprised if all our medical and government records have been compromised already.
I've found that all MS products are easy to install and run, as long as nothing goes wrong. The moment something fails, you've got major pain to deal with. You're going to have to bring in someone with lots of acronyms after their name.
It's like a modern luxury car: Pretty and comfortable, but when it breaks, you're looking at an expensive visit to the dealer.
So, the reason the UK is having these issues is because of this: http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/01/15/151223 You censor the nets, you deal with a lot of upset hackers.