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."

Comments

B-5

[Grinfell]

Somebody sunk their Battleship.

Re:B-5

[pixelpusher220]

Navy SysEngr: Well the good news is the ship has been pwned and is sending out spam

Admiral: That's the 'Good news'? what the hell is the bad news?

Navy SysEngr: It's being delivered by ICBM...

Re:Switching to Windows

[Anonymous Coward]

A year is roughly 29 days long now?

Appropriate enough

[Anonymous Coward]

All your base are belong to "someone other than yourselves"

Re:What happened to *nix ?

[Anonymous Coward]

If defense systems weren't running on Windows, how would security personnel inconspicuously play solitaire?

pfah

[amnezick]

Of course they went to Windows:
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 /var/log/messages"

Re:pfah

[francium de neobie]

But then why don't they switch to the iPhone?

Surely touching the torpedo and then touching the enemy's battleship is even easier than clicking? Even a kid can do it.

Re:pfah

[MarkRose]

It looks like 'attack' uses GNU-style command line switches. Do you know if the source code is available?

Sincerely,
Ministry of Defence.

Re:pfah

[value_added]

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 /var/log/messages"

More likely it was done using a wizard invoked as Start > Programs > Ministry of Defense > Utilities > Torpedo Enterprise Edition 1.37 > Torpedo Launch. MoD Power Users would, of course, just do Start > Run > TLaunch.EXE to open the graphical window before holding the mouse on the spin box to increment the coordinate numbers to the correct values, and then selecting File > Actions > Torpedo > Launch and clicking "Yes" on the "Are You Sure?" dialog boxes. SuperKeen Techsavy Power Users will shun the above methods and opt for something more Unix-like:

Windows Powershell
Copyright (C) 2006 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reservered.

$ C:\Documents and Settings\Midshipman R. Kelly>Get-WmiObject -Class Win32_PingStatus -Filter "Address='42394799879x3179478912'" -SubmarineName '*' | Select-Object -Property Address,ResponseTime,StatusCode
64 bytes from Russian_Sub: icmp_seq=0 ttl=64 time=109 ms
64 bytes from Russian_Sub: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=38 ms
64 bytes from Russian_Sub: icmp_seq=2 ttl=64 time=0 ms
^C
$ C:\Documents and Settings\Midshipman R. Kelly>(Get-WmiObject -List -Foes . | Where-Object -FilterScript {$_.Name -eq "Russian_Sub"}).InvokeMethod("Torpedo",("attack","weapon torpedo",2,"42394799879","3179478912"))
The requested service has not started is not running.
More help is by typing NET HELPMSG 38000357699.
$ C:\Documents and Settings\Midshipman R. Kelly>Restart-Service -displayname "Ministry of Defense Torpedo Service"
Ministry of Defense Torpedo Service is starting.
$ C:\Documents and Settings\Midshipman R. Kelly>(Get-WmiObject -List -Foes . | Where-Object -FilterScript {$_.Name -eq "Russian_Sub"}).InvokeMethod("Torpedo",("attack","weapon torpedo",2,"42394799879","3179478912"))
System Error 1058 has occured.
The service cannot be started, either because it is disabled, it has no enabled devices associated with it, or you lack sufficient administrative rights.
$ C:\Documents and Settings\Midshipman R. Kelly>get-eventlog application -newest 10 | format-list | more

Mod +5 Worthy of Tears

Brave New World

[tcolberg]

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.

If they'd watched BSG they'd have known better

[drewish_princess]

Admiral Adama never would have let that happen on his ship.

Re:Switching to Windows

[davester666]

Too bad for the UK Defense department. It's just over the 7 day return policy for ordering goods over the internet, so they can't return Windows for a refund.

Black Tot Day, 1970

[Kirth]

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.

Re:Switching to Windows

[2Bits]

Well, when you are living in a window-less basement^^^ er, I mean, your command center, 29 days seems like a whole year :)

Re:Switching to Windows

[Joce640k]

Maybe the Norton 30-day trial has expired.

Re:Switching to Windows

[rastilin]

On behalf of Slashdot I accept that you were right and that we should have listened to you. Furthermore I bestow upon you the title of "Psyker".