MoD's Error Leaks Secrets of UK Nuclear Submarine

Tasha26 writes "UK's Ministry of Defence admitted that secret information about its nuclear powered submarines was leaked on the internet by mistake. A 'technical error' (i.e. turning the background colour of certain text to black) meant that sensitive blacked-out parts of the online MoD report could be read by anyone who copy-pasted it into another document. This accidental leak reveals, among many other things, how easy it would be to cause a Fukushima-style reactor meltdown in a sub, and details of measures used by the US Navy to protect its own nuclear submarines."

Comments

hahaha

[Anonymous Coward]

the age old PDF gag... when will people learn
Step 1 ) Print
Step 2 ) Black Out
Step 3 ) Scan said document (2 bit)
( did not RTFA )

Re:hahaha

[RoFLKOPTr]

Or perhaps
Step 1 ) Remove sensitive information

Re:hahaha

[JustOK]

screen shot

Re:hahaha

[PhunkySchtuff]

It absolutely boggles my mind that this can still happen.

Adobe specifically have put in a redaction feature into Acrobat Pro just to do this, and it couldn't be easier to use.

You select the redaction tool and drag your mouse over the text to redact. Select as many pieces of text as you want, they're hilighted while you're doing it so you can see what you're doing.

Then, when you're done, click the Apply Redactions button and it's done.

Not only is the text on the page redacted, but any metadata (and there's often quite a bit in your average PDF) that could potentially leak important information is removed too. You now have a PDF that's safe to distribute and I'd wager that it's actually easier to do it this way than it would be to draw black rectangles over everything you want to hide.

Re:hahaha

[MightyYar]

Or perhaps
Step 1 ) Remove sensitive information

Hasn't this bitten people in the past when they shared a Word document that had quick save enabled or something like that?

Re:hahaha

[MightyYar]

So then... we gather that either you are against emotions, law, authority, etc. or you just like to make lists.

Re:hahaha

[frozentier]

Or perhaps Step 1 ) Remove sensitive information

Exactly. Why the hell would you put ANYTHING sensitive like that on any computer connected to the internet?

Re:hahaha

[lxs]

You've been posting this shit for a couple of days now. Are you a bot, a troll or a sad individual crying for help?
Just curious.

Re:hahaha

[Anonymous Coward]

I think this would be one of those times where it can be difficult to distinguish between a troll and schizophrenic.

Re:hahaha

[maxwell demon]

Well, then add 1a: Never ever distribute content in the form of a MS Word document (or in another format meant for editing instead of distribution).

Re:hahaha

[bertoelcon]

You forgot all the links to wikipedia.

Re:hahaha

[MightyYar]

I get the point, but scanning a hand-redacted document is idiot-proof. Besides, some applications save editing data into PDFs. OpenOffice does this, for instance. So that's yet another set of items you'd have to add to your list: 1b: When exporting the PDF, use a print driver and not the PDF export function of your program.

Re:hahaha

[KingBenny]

im sure someone else pointed this out before me but how about having sensitive documents like this handled only by people who actually know a bit about the software they work with? Its not very reassuring that someone who has access to and even has the right to edit this kind of information makes what seems to be a layman's mistake. If Sony had such people working for them we'd all be making ps3 backups for a long time now, no ?

Re:hahaha

[Anonymous Coward]

This is why, at least in every classified area I've worked in, the "trusted download" procedure for removing unclassified information from a classified network did NOT allow for the removal of anything that was binary in nature - and MS Office documents are binary in this case.

Basically this meant:
1) ASCII text
2) Printouts which were checked visually

Not much else...

Avoid the Tsunamis

[Anonymous Coward]

Unlike a 10,000 ton nuclear power plant the submarine might be able to avoid tsunamis

Re:Avoid the Tsunamis

[MichaelSmith]

Not if they are full of leaks.

Re:Avoid the Tsunamis

[Walt Dismal]

If only the Navy used fusion reactors like the US Space Command does on its plasma vehicles, they wouldn't have such risky vessels. Ooops. I was not supposed to say that on the Internet. Or that our black triangle craft are powered by them. Ooops again. (slapping self on wrist. Look what happened to Bradley Manning, you idiot!)

Re:Avoid the Tsunamis

[Anonymous Coward]

"Ooops. I was not supposed to say that on the Internet."

The Brits weren't either.
They were supposed to 'forget' the documents in an underground train.
It's a tradition there.

Re:Avoid the Tsunamis

[BancBoy]

There are some Welsh sailors on the submarine, but I wouldn't describe it as "full of leeks."

Oh, leaks, sorry.

Re:Avoid the Tsunamis

[Sulphur]

Unlike a 10,000 ton nuclear power plant the submarine might be able to avoid tsunamis

They can also operate under 70 feet of water; even diesel subs can.

People Are Stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

Why are the people who control dangerous things always so stupid?

Simple: The vast majority of people are stupid.

Re:People Are Stupid

[Joce640k]

I'll use Hanlon's razor on your reply and merely point out that at least half the population are of above average intelligence.

Re:People Are Stupid

[Kilrah_il]

Actually, 50% of the people have below-average intelligence (assuming a Gaussian distribution), which is a far cry from a "vast majority". It's just that here on /. the average intelligence is above that of the general population (yea, I know), so we tend to look down on all the "others".
Using background color to black-out sensitive material may seem stupid to us on /., but it is understandable that someone who doesn't know much about computers will think it is secure, esp. since the final PDF file is uneditable. The question is why someone with, obviously, minimal computer skills is given such an important task?

Re:People Are Stupid

[second_coming]

I'll use Hanlon's razor on your reply and merely point out that at least half the population are of above average intelligence.

Many intelligent people have zero common sense, which is often the reason for seemingly stupid acts.

Re:People Are Stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

Because often getting these jobs is more about who you know then what you know.

Re:People Are Stupid

[alendit]

Above average != not stupid.

And GP has answered your question - because there are not enough non-stupid people for every important task. So you have to go with people like me...

Re:People Are Stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, 50% of the population is of above MEAN intelligence, and 50% of the population is below MEAN intelligence. The fact is that much, much more than half the world's population is of below average intelligence...
Intelligence is also no indicator for sense and knowledge. A highly intelligent Chinese farmer who lives on subsistence and never attended a school could never manage a nuclear submarine reactor. Consequently, a sports-scholarship ivy league graduate is much more likely to be the person who manages a nuclear submarine reactor, even though they may not necessarily be very intelligent. They have, however, been given exposure to how such things are built, maintained and repaired.

Re:People Are Stupid

[u38cg]

Since there is no one way to measure intelligence, it's not really possible to say whether intelligence distribution is Gaussian (or anything else). IQ scores, however, are co-erced to a Gaussian distribution, one of the things that has always made me deeply suspicious of them. It is very clear that the natural distribution is *much* fatter tailed to the right than the Gaussian.

Re:People Are Stupid

[peragrin]

while your quite correct in theory, one must remember that if your average your still and idiot to begin with.

the "average" person isn't smart enough to understand the difference in words like redaction , deletion and blackout.

Re:People Are Stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

And some of the bellow average people apparently don't understand the difference between average, mean and median.

Re:People Are Stupid

[Kilrah_il]

Technically, it is obvious that the the "real" distribution of IQ scores in not Gaussian, if only because in a Gaussian distribution both tails should continue on to infinity, which is untrue for IQ scores (in both directions).

Re:People Are Stupid

[Jawnn]

while your quite correct in theory, one must remember that if your average your still and idiot to begin with.

the "average" person isn't smart enough to understand the difference in words like redaction , deletion and blackout.

Or, say..., "your" and "you're".

Re:People Are Stupid

[WrongSizeGlass]

while your quite correct in theory, one must remember that if your average your still and idiot to begin with.

Please, oh please tell me all those were intentional.

Re:People Are Stupid

[WrongSizeGlass]

Why are the people who control dangerous things always so stupid?

Simple: The vast majority of people are stupid.

Let's not forget that the vast majority of people who control dangerous things assume the vast majority of people are stupid so they don't do enough to protect things from the people who aren't as dumb as they should be.

Re:People Are Stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

And some of the bellow average people apparently don't understand the difference between average, mean and median.

YOU CAN SAY THAT AGAIN!

Re:People Are Stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

In America, Homer Simpson runs nuclear power plant

What is the British equivalence of Homer Simpson in the UK?

Re:People Are Stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

The question is why someone with, obviously, minimal computer skills is given such an important task?

Because their formal CS degree allowed them to out an "uneducated" hacker from the position.

Re:People Are Stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

Or rather: everybody makes stupid mistakes.

Like that guy said a long time ago: errare humanum est.

Re:People Are Stupid

[DrBoumBoum]

t here on /. the average intelligence is above that of the general population

Let's say this is what people here like to fancy. Now is it the truth? Not at all obvious to me.

Re:People Are Stupid

[MightyYar]

I'll use Hanlon's razor on your reply and merely point out that at least half the population are of above average intelligence.

"Average" is not where I draw the line between stupid and smart. If there is such a line, it would be well above the mean line.

Re:People Are Stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, 50% of the people have below-average intelligence [...] It's just that here on /. the average intelligence is above that of the general population [...] The question is why someone with, obviously, minimal computer skills is given such an important task?

You mean like the way that the text color isn't set on slashdots form fields (so if you have a dark theme, you're typing white on white)? Obviously I can add a rule to userContent.css but I like constant reminders of how careless / clueless people are -- nobody is so free from mistakes or oversights that they can skip checking and testing their work.

Re:People Are Stupid

[fnord_uk]

Mr Bean?

Re:People Are Stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

Also as Long Term Capital Management's failure showed the tails are thicker at both ends than they are thought to be theoretically.

Re:People Are Stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

People should stop beveling in uneditable digital file formats. Just because some doesn't provide an editor or conversion program does not mean that someone else won't or can't.
For example Autodesk is promoting PDF output as an uneditable vector format for cad drawings, while other mainstream cad programs (like Rhino 3D) happily import vector PDF files, even retaining block and layer information in some cases.

More on-topic, there is software to guess the blacked-out words in censored documents based on worth length. this works especially well for documents in proportional fonts, since different words will then have different lengths, even if they have the same number of characters.
Maybe replacing text with a fixed (or random) size black rectangle would be a solution, but even if such software existed, governments are know for getting the wrong piece of software anyway...

Re:People Are Stupid

[budgenator]

The question is why someone with, obviously, minimal computer skills is given such an important task?

Because his manager has given him glowing performance reviews, primarily because of his stellar computer skills compared to his reviewing manager; he may even be the "go to guy" for computer issues and the ad hoc trainer for his department.

Re:People Are Stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

Since there is no one way to measure intelligence, it's not really possible to say whether intelligence distribution is Gaussian (or anything else). IQ scores, however, are co-erced to a Gaussian distribution, one of the things that has always made me deeply suspicious of them. It is very clear that the natural distribution is *much* fatter tailed to the right than the Gaussian.

Any good measurement of intelligence would be, approximately, a normal distribution. See central limit theorem as for why. Any good measurement of universal intelligence would measure a lot of abilities, abilities that are summed together to create just one index. The reason you think intelligence is not normal distributed, is either that your personal method to measure intelligence is flawed (my guess, you only put value to a few personal abilities, shame on you for being narrow minded), and/or that you have a too skewed sample (i.e. only include your friends, people in your neighbourhood, people at your workplace, people in your city, people in your state, people at slashdot et.c., shame on you for being narrow minded, you should strive to get to know more different people, not just people that are like yourself).

Re:People Are Stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

An alternative, slightly more complicated explanation:

Egotistical bastards seek positions of power. Once there they abuse that power to further enrich and empower themselves, taking risks that often involve other people's well-being. More often than not they succeed (iow, they're not stupid), but every now and again they over-step and it backfires on them.

Re:People Are Stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

Or, say, "your" and "you're."

FTFY

Re:People Are Stupid

[maxwell demon]

There's a bit of difference between a slashdot comment and a state secret.

Re:People Are Stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

On the contrary.

In Finland, an astonishing 75% of drivers reported themselves as being significantly better than average drivers.

Also, in Finland, a number of candidates in today's parliamentary elections in an unnamed left-wing party have declared that everyone in Finland should be earning at least the national average salary, with the nicest offer being average + 25% for everyone

Re:People Are Stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

while you're quite correct in theory, one must remember that if you're grammar and diction are average you're still an illiterate terd, sir.

Re:People Are Stupid

[Paolone]

Actually, 50% of the people have below-average intelligence (assuming a Gaussian distribution)

Actually, 50% of the population have below median intelligence. We can't really assume a gaussian distribution here.

Re:People Are Stupid

[hey!]

But that doesn't explain the gap in expectations. You'd expect people who have such responsible positions not to be representative of the population, and I expect they're not. The lack. may be more one of imagination than intelligence.

The one exceptional virtue of a bureaucracy is consistency ; the corresponding vice is inflexibility. People who rise in them reflect. this. They may be very reliable persons, but expecting them to wonder whether something actually works the way it appears to might be too much.

Of course it takes all kinds. I wouldn't want to rely on a hacker to process my reimbursement requests and get me paid on time.

Re:People Are Stupid

[u38cg]

Actually, no. No IQ test contains measures sufficiently sensitive, but *by design* it should in theory encounter people with negative IQs. By in theory I mean once in every hundred billion people, roughly.

Re:People Are Stupid

[ScrewMaster]

while you're quite correct in theory, one must remember that if you're grammar and diction are average you're still an illiterate terd, sir.

You still got it wrong.

Re:People Are Stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

Most of the time, I've heard that redacted documents are blacked out on physical paper, and then scanned back in. It makes it much less readable, but at least you're guaranteed that you won't have problems like this.

Re:People Are Stupid

[lennier]

That's the problem with trying to make things foolproof - fools keep getting smarter.

Re:People Are Stupid

[lennier]

Of course it takes all kinds. I wouldn't want to rely on a hacker to process my reimbursement requests and get me paid on time.

Your first payslip would arrive immaculately printed and three weeks early.

Your second payslip would arrive three weeks late, soaked in Mountain Dew, and the ink would also perform a waltz rendition of the "ESB Imperial Theme" while it dialled NORAD.

Your third payslip would contain a live bobcat.

Re:People Are Stupid

[Jawnn]

LOL. Touche', sir, though you will have to admit that a typo and using the wrong word are to different things. Still, it just sucks to have one's witty riposte ruined by one carelessly placed apostrophe.

Re:People Are Stupid

[Nyder]

I'll use Hanlon's razor on your reply and merely point out that at least half the population are of above average intelligence.

I'll use Hanlon's razor on your reply and merely point out that all studies and stats are flawed.

Now i have to google Hanlon's razor. Wonder if it had 3 blades or 5?

Ahh, i see. even though I didn't know what it means, i think i used it okay.

Re:People Are Stupid

[ShakaUVM]

Well, certainly the redactor at the Ministry of Defense is stupid. Nuclear Engineers are not stupid at all. The US Navy (I don't know how the Red Shirts do things) are very selective about the people they put in charge of the reactors, they overengineer everything, have an impressive safety record, and generally have a very rigorous approach to everything nuclear.

This is why, after Chernobyl and TMI and all the nuclear fearmongering in the press, when Congress called them on the carpet to explain why exactly we had these "nuclear bombs" powering our fleets, the Navy was allowed to keep running them as-is.

Most of this culture came from Adm. Hyman Rickover. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyman_G._Rickover

Re:People Are Stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

Only if there is a normal distribution. To take an extreme example, if some guy had an IQ of 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 and everyone else was in the typical range, then only one guy would be above average intelligence, and everyone else would be below it.

Re:People Are Stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

You are pre-supposing that there is such a thing as a "natural" distribution. If I have a definition of intelligence, I am able to tell which of two people is more intelligent by this definition - but I do not necessarily have a way to determine whether the difference in intelligence between persons A and B is greater or less than that between persons B and C. Adjusting the scale so that the distribution fits a Gaussian (as for IQ scores) is a perfectly reasonable thing to do when there's no intrinsic distribution.

Re:People Are Stupid

[TangoMargarine]

And some of the "above average" people seem to take a great deal of joy in pointing things like this out at every opportunity.

Re:People Are Stupid

[cbiltcliffe]

Let me guess:

State secrets are made unreadable by font colour changes, whereas slashdot comments are made unreadable by fucked up javascript and CSS?

Re:People Are Stupid

[cthulhu11]

Thank you. The unchallenged assumptions about the distributions of various things have troubled me since the stats classes we were forced to take back in college.

Re:People Are Stupid

[petman]

LOL. Touche', sir, though you will have to admit that a typo and using the wrong word are two different things.

Sometimes it can be the same thing.

Re:People Are Stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know about the British, but I'm pretty sure in Soviet Russia, nuclear power plant runs you!

Re:People Are Stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps you meant to say that half are above median intelligence?

Re:People Are Stupid

[tehcyder]

Only if there is a normal distribution. To take an extreme example, if some guy had an IQ of 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 and everyone else was in the typical range, then only one guy would be above average intelligence, and everyone else would be below it.

So which is more likely, that intelligence has normal distribution, or that there is someone with an IQ of 10^30?

Re:People Are Stupid

[tehcyder]

t here on /. the average intelligence is above that of the general population

Let's say this is what people here like to fancy. Now is it the truth? Not at all obvious to me.

I think the number of racist trolls on slasshdot proves there are just as many idiots as geniuses here.

Re:People Are Stupid

[tehcyder]

In America, Homer Simpson runs nuclear power plant

What is the British equivalence of Homer Simpson in the UK?

Prince William.

Re:People Are Stupid

[DrBoumBoum]

Just like in the general population...

Re:People Are Stupid

[sjames]

It could be quantized Gaussian. Quantized because the intelligence of a particular 2 thousandths of a person is meaningless.

Re:People Are Stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

fatter tailed to the right? either skewed, or fat tailed, but please not: fatter tailed on one end. that might describe something, but it sounds so turded, it makes every statistician want to kill himself. ;)
far more important... how is it "clear" that it is so?

Fukushima-style?

[neokushan]

"This accidental leak reveals, among many other things, how easy it would be to cause a Fukushima-style reactor meltdown in a sub"

Is that it, now? Is every single thing to do with nuclear reactors going to be compared to Fukushima from now on? What about if terrorists wanted to create a Chernobyl-style meltdown, or how about a three-mile-island-style meltdown?
No really, it's fine, I don't mind throwing random keywords in there to grab extra attention when it's completely unnecessary.

Re:Fukushima-style?

[Kilrah_il]

Fukushima is the Library of Congress of nuclear meltdowns. Just as 9/11 is the LoC of terror attacks. People love relative terms; nobody understands a 10^9 becquerel of radiation.

Re:Fukushima-style?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is that it, now? Is every single thing to do with nuclear reactors going to be compared to Fukushima from now on?

And this is bad how exactly ?

Re:Fukushima-style?

[Kronotross]

Obviously they meant that it reveals how easy it would be to hit the submarine with a tidal wave after it experiences a ~9.0 earthquake, thus disconnecting its power from the energy grid it relies on to cool its core.

Re:Fukushima-style?

[TheSync]

Fukushima meltdown means your backup cooling method goes out after a scram (and tsunami), and you are basically screwed. This requires a failure of imagination about worst possible scenarios combined with a bad plant location.

Chernobyl explosion is a criticality accident. This requires a really high level of ignorant stupidity or purposeful attack.

Three Mile Island meltdown is that you don't realize a valve is open and your core water boils away. This requires a level of stupidity in human/machine interaction.

Re:Fukushima-style?

[thegarbz]

The vast majority don't understand "Fukushima-style" radiation either ;-)

Re:Fukushima-style?

[DrBoumBoum]

You don't understand, now there are two levels on the seriousness scale for nuclear accidents: Chernobyl = the worst (obviously, since it was stinking commies who did it), Fukushima =much less serious, to the point of being almost laughable, since it's "only 10%" of Chernobyl (up to now, but let's not get picky here) and done by Japanese that you hardly can look at with a scorn from a technology point of view.

Re:Fukushima-style?

[DrBoumBoum]

Sincerely interested here: how would you categorize the Davis-Besse near miss on this scale?

Re:Fukushima-style?

[JamesP]

Not to mention that, the average nuclear submarine has between 0.01 to 0.001 the amount of fuel than one reactor at Fukushima (maybe less)

And a (slightly) different technology

Next thing we'll know they're calling a RTG "this is flying Fukushima "

Re:Fukushima-style?

[drinkypoo]

Is that it, now? Is every single thing to do with nuclear reactors going to be compared to Fukushima from now on?

Yes, because the official scale is based on the worst nuclear disaster to date, and that was Chernobyl but is now Fukushima supposedly. So now we're going to rank nuclear disasters in fractions of Fukushima until we have an even bigger disaster.

Re:Fukushima-style?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not bad, per se; just stupid.

Re:Fukushima-style?

[JackSpratts]

they understand it enough to get away from it.

Re:Fukushima-style?

[budgenator]

This just seems like a such a bad comparison to me, the Fukushima-style reactor meltdown was a "we ran out of water" thing; how would that happen in a submarine?

Re:Fukushima-style?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's drawing the crayon picture for the less educated public. plus right now it's a flashy fresh catch phrase.

Re:Fukushima-style?

[dunkelfalke]

Nuclear submarine fuel is much more enriched, though.

Re:Fukushima-style?

[Fierlo]

I would put it on the path to Chernobyl. It was willful negligence on the part of the plant owner.

Re:Fukushima-style?

[Anonymous Coward]

That is an exaggeration. Fukushima is far from 9/11 of Chernobyl.

Re:Fukushima-style?

[Anonymous Coward]

Including every single slashdot poster who has tried to explain it thus far.

Re:Fukushima-style?

[DrBoumBoum]

It was willful negligence on the part of the plant owner.

I whole-heartedly agree, and I would go as far as saying that really the same thing happened at Fukushima: the operator chose a questionable location to cut costs, underestimated the risks, then neglected the reports pointing to the dangerous situation. Same thing happened with the Deepwater Horizon rig (multiple cost-optimizing decisions led to the final accident), with both lost space shuttles (people neglected reports that were pushing for costly actions to be taken), with the Concorde aircraft (the particular design weakness that lead to the crash had been identified decades earlier), and probably with the majority of industrial accidents at the end of the day: security is as strong as the weakest link, and it is a basic overwhelming law of human nature to try and trim the string until it breaks, i.e., a major accident happens, at which point some efforts are made to compensate for the weakness, and the cycle goes on.

This is why I think people are perfectly justified in being so wary about nuclear power, notwithstanding newer safety measures or reactor designs: they know that the engineers strive to make it safe but the management strive to make it profitable; I don't even blame them for that, that's their job and even one could say their duty. But this means that accidents, leaks and spills are bound to happen, and the problem with radioactivity is that once it's there it's here to stay, people understand that pretty well in my opinion.

Re:Fukushima-style?

[Anonymous Coward]

bullshit about relative terms. everyone loves to be scared. the visualization is of scary things, not relative results. 9/11 is the scariest terrorist attack. you bet your ass everyone thinks of 9/11 when a terrorist fails to blow up some hatch back on the freeway.

Re:Fukushima-style?

[slyborg]

My Chernobyl Red-Star Style will make quick work of your pathetic Fukushima Dawn-Glow Style!

Chernobyl - Jet Li
Fukushima - Toshiro Mifune
Three Mile Island - Wesley Snipes

Re:Fukushima-style?

[Sweetshark]

they know that the engineers strive to make it safe but the management strive to make it profitable; I don't even blame them for that, that's their job and even one could say their duty. But this means that accidents, leaks and spills are bound to happen, and the problem with radioactivity is that once it's there it's here to stay, people understand that pretty well in my opinion.

I think, an additional factor is that nuclear reactors require a huge infrastructures and are operated by huge hierarchies. I would think a small team of experts might be trusted with the inherit risks, because the channels of communication are short. But as is, nuclear power is unsafe -- not because it is technically risky, but organizationally risky. The same applies to all the other examples mentioned.

Re:Fukushima-style?

[ScrewMaster]

not because it is technically risky, but organizationally risky. The same applies to all the other examples mentioned.

The French seem to be handling it fairly well, but then again they made the effort to standardize. Our reactors, on the other hand, are unique works of art ... a fundamentally stupid approach when you get right down to it.

Re:Fukushima-style?

[cowboy76Spain]

Well, I do not think they have any pipes to pour sea water into the reactor.... so being in a submarine does not help to that (indeed Fukushima was at the coast and that did not get, either).

Re:Fukushima-style?

[lennier]

Fukushima meltdown means your backup cooling method goes out after a scram (and tsunami), and you are basically screwed. This requires a failure of imagination about worst possible scenarios combined with a bad plant location.

In their defense, failure of imagination about worst-case scenarios is the only way nuclear engineers can sleep at night. You have to have a very robust sense of "nonsense old chap, the fuel rods could never melt!" or you might start to dwell on "but what if they did...? and how many decades would the and be unfarmable...?" scenarios.

And that way lies the screaming jeebies and men in white suits and dosimeters. It's all much better for everyone just to learn not to speculate too deeply about how long those isotopes you're working with take to decay and what they might do to the food chain.

Gee willikers! It's our friend Mr Neutron on the Radio-Isotope with his pals Millie Sievert and Terry Becquerel! Time to harness the power of Atoms For Peace!

Re:Fukushima-style?

[DerekLyons]

Not to mention that, the average nuclear submarine has between 0.01 to 0.001 the amount of fuel than one reactor at Fukushima (maybe less)

Nuclear submarine fuel is also enriched to near bomb grade (90 odd percent) while civil reactor fuel is only enriched to around 20%.
 
Even if Fukushima was a PWR like in a nuclear submarine (it's not, it's a BWR) there are... significant differences in the design of a naval plant versus a civil plant.

Re:Fukushima-style?

[Nyder]

The vast majority don't understand "Fukushima-style" radiation either ;-)

Is that what the next Stalker game is going to be called?

Re:Fukushima-style?

[Blakey Rat]

... that doesn't sound easy at all.

Re:Fukushima-style?

[Anonymous Coward]

Give this man a no-award

Re:Fukushima-style?

[Anonymous Coward]

Fukushima meltdown means your backup cooling method goes out after a scram (and tsunami), and you are basically screwed. This requires a failure of imagination about worst possible scenarios combined with a bad plant location.

Especially considering the difficulty a Submarine would have in getting water in to cool the scrammed reactor.

Re:Fukushima-style?

[ElusiveJoe]

Chernobyl explosion is a criticality accident. This requires a really high level of ignorant stupidity or purposeful attack.

Are you an expert in this matter? Because from what I've read about Chernobyl, it was mainly a cheap design's fault, which failed under extreme conditions of an experiment.

Re:Fukushima-style?

[AmiMoJo]

I'll give you lack of imagination, although it does seem to have been a genuine oversight since the earthquake itself produced movement stresses far below the design limit. Since most earthquakes in Japan generate a tsunami (typically 1m high) and they built sea defences it would appear that the maximum wave height calculated was wrong.

The location however is fine. By building it by the sea in the event of an emergency sea water can be used to cool the reactors. It also provides a way to release contaminated water if the need arises. Both these things have been done. If they had not had these options then things would be much worse than they are now.

Re:Fukushima-style?

[mzs]

Because of SEO, be thankful it could not be somehow associated with mesothelioma lawyers, diet pills, or worse.

Re:Fukushima-style?

[TheSync]

Davis-Besse had high pressure injection pumps that would reinject lost coolant had the LOCA initiated. Without additional failures of the back-up equipment, it would have been more TMI and less Fukushima.

Clearly the reactor operators missed hints of RPV corrosion such as radiation element system filters being clogged by boric acid and corrosion fines, the build up of boric acid deposits on containment air cooler fins and large amounts of boric acid deposits on the RPV head.

The nuclear industry as a whole should have been more on the watch for boric acid corrosion in general.

Re:Fukushima-style?

[sjames]

Submarine reactors are also loaded with burnable poisons to compensate.

0_o

[Anonymous Coward]

This... must be a joke or something... This can't be real...

Where's the doc?

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck UK national security. Where's the leak? It actually sounds worth reading.

Junior Member?

[Kilrah_il]

From the article:

The senior technology consultant at web safety firm Sophos said: “It’s a staggeringly stupid thing to do. Anyone with even an elementary knowledge of computing would know how to read it. I can only assume they gave it to a junior member of staff to deal with.

On the contrary, a junior member probably would have had some computer know-how. They probably gave it to some old-timer who knows nothing about computers (apologies to all /. {1,2,3} UIDs; I am talking about mere mortals, and I will be sure to get off your lawn) and he just thought that if he changes the background, the words will remain blacked-out forever.

Oh, and BTW, what's with the last sentence?

Two weeks ago two officers were shot – one fatally – on HMS Astute, when it was docked in Southampton. Sailor Ryan Donovan, 23, has been charged with murder.

I don't see how it is related to the article, except in regards of it talking about one of Britain's submarines. Talk about tangentiality.

Re:Junior Member?

[agw]

From the article:

Two weeks ago two officers were shot – one fatally – on HMS Astute, when it was docked in Southampton. Sailor Ryan Donovan, 23, has been charged with murder.

I don't see how it is related to the article, except in regards of it talking about one of Britain's submarines. Talk about tangentiality.

Guy in suicide mode shooting his fellow soldiers in walking distance to a nuclear reactor IS worth mentioning.
It also reminds me of Hunt for Red October, which was a cool movie.

Re:Junior Member?

[Anonymous Coward]

According to the guardian newspaper the shooting was caused by an argument over toilet usage.
Therefore in order to avoid nuclear catastrophe all subs should be fitted with more toilets post haste.

Re:Junior Member?

[Kilrah_il]

...or with no toilets whatsoever!

Re:Junior Member?

[Fnkmaster]

Right, why do you need a toilet when you can just take a leak on the reactor to cool it down?

Re:Junior Member?

[Kilrah_il]

...and take a crap in the torpedo chute.

Re:Junior Member?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't see how it is related to the article, except in regards of it talking about one of Britain's submarines. Talk about tangentiality.

From the article:

Blame it on UK libel laws. The writer of TFA wished to make the point that there ARE rogue sailors without asserting that a specific sailor who recently shot two officers was such a rogue. "Such a disaster could, in certain circumstances, be caused by a lone rogue sailor, experts said yesterday." .... Now insert a bunch more text ... "Two weeks ago two officers were shot - one fatally - on HMS Astute, when it was docked in Southampton. Sailor Ryan Donovan, 23, has been charged with murder." And voila, that pesky little libel problem is solved.

Re:Junior Member?

[Anonymous Coward]

Blaming it on a juniour member is definately a common thing to do when a senior member is at fault. Every time there is a hideous breach of private information or a NOT handwritten into Canadian legislation, it's a 'low-level' beurocrat at fault. It's used to conjure up images of pimply-faced amateur civil servants.

It's a good reason for intelligent, dedicated civil servants to leave the government...

Re:Junior Member?

[newdsfornerds]

That was my first thought. They let some old fart or someone completely non-technical handle it.

Re:Junior Member?

[Anonymous Coward]

Obviously this was the punishment for the botched redaction job.

Re:Junior Member?

[Anonymous Coward]

This has been leaked for political reasons by the scotish anti nuclear weapon group opposed to trident. The leak reveals that the mod has been discussing changing the reactor design for trident replacement. What is interesting is the channel four report questions if the current reactor design in use today could withstand moderate hostile action.

The official secret act is a serious bit of uk law, wonder if the pressure group may also find themselves in the goverments cross hairs

Re:Junior Member?

[TangoMargarine]

Piss is hot.

(I'll be waiting for my +5 Insightful like that other guy who posted something about licking buttholes.)

Re:Junior Member?

[agw]

Makes you wonder why people who start shooting mates over toilet usage dispute are allowed to work on a nuclear sub.

Re:Junior Member?

[godel_56]

According to the guardian newspaper the shooting was caused by an argument over toilet usage. Therefore in order to avoid nuclear catastrophe all subs should be fitted with more toilets post haste.

Two heads are better than one.

Re:Junior Member?

[tehcyder]

Makes you wonder why people who start shooting mates over toilet usage dispute are allowed to work on a nuclear sub.

They must have left the "would you shoot your mate because he used the toilet in front of you and didn't clean up properly?" question off that year's HR forms.

Re:Junior Member?

[mzs]

They threw in that shooting bit at the end since they are hoping a few more people google for something tangentially related and read their page. Just like they tried to tie in to Fukushima.

Re:Junior Member?

[sjames]

At least nobody slipped on tea.

Daily Star?

[neokushan]

On another note, why in the name of fuck is Slashdot posting anything from the Daily Star? The newspaper is most famous for its page-3 topless girls and their sheer determination to use words with as few syllables as possible.

Have a look at the website, the topics along the top, they've got an entire section dedicated to "Babes" and what's more the bottom of the article has the words "More 'News' Here". That's right, not even the website itself genuinely believes that it has real news there, instead opting to put the term in quotes.

Seriously...the daily star? Is this what slashdot has come to?

Re:Daily Star?

[Anonymous Coward]

Seconded.... WTF indeed

Re:Daily Star?

[Anonymous Coward]

I was not interested in the story until you mentioned Topless Girls ;-) I have now checked this submarines story and much like it.

Re:Daily Star?

[PolygamousRanchKid]

The newspaper is most famous for its page-3 topless girls

Which is something that Slashdot could use more of! Forget, "OMG! Ponies!" How about next April 1st, we see a page-3 topless girls Slashdot site. Sure should be more interesting than all of those other April 1st articles . . .

Re:Daily Star?

[Alain Williams]

On another note, why in the name of fuck is Slashdot posting anything from the Daily Star? The newspaper is most famous for its page-3 topless girls and their sheer determination to use words with as few syllables as possible.

So what if they have pictures of totty in their pages, that is not what is being linked to. The Daily Star do not seem to have made the story up, the write up seems as good as you get anywhere else. It appears that the Daily Star alterted the MOD about their stupidity so they are the origin of the story & deserve credit for that.

If you are such an intellectual snob that you won't read the Daily Star, here is the story on the BBC.

Re:Daily Star?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorryzz... i know what you mean. In my defence, the same BBC News article pointed to Daily Star and comparing the two, there was more meat in Daily Star. You can check.

Re:Daily Star?

[Mark Hood]

Probably because they're the ones who broke the story - it's been picked up by slightly more high-brow outlets too, but it's a tradition that you link to the source of a story. Even the BBC point to them: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-13107413

Unless you have a blog to pimp, and need the ad revenue... then you post your link on the front page and wait for the Slashdot effect to make you rich ;)

Re:Daily Star?

[Anonymous Coward]

How about next April 1st, we see a page-3 topless girls Slashdot site.

Dood, you're on the internet.
Here, lmgtfy.
There are enough topless sites out there to fill the library of congress - no need to put them on slashdot.

Re:Daily Star?

[Namarrgon]

It appears that the Daily Star alterted the MOD about their stupidity

So even the Daily Star is smarter than the Ministry of Defense now?

We are so screwed.

Re:Daily Star?

[drinkypoo]

lmgtfy fails without javascript, which is just stupid. Next time try fuckinggoogleit.com

Re:Daily Star?

[Anonymous Coward]

Plus it makes sense they would figure this out first. Apparently The Daily Star is especially good at uncovering things that are normally covered up.

Re:Daily Star?

[KZigurs]

I can only imagine the twitch of the editor at BBC.

*we* ... *link* ... *daily star* ...

Re:Daily Star?

[Blakey Rat]

Look, we Americans have no idea which UK newspapers are trash and which aren't. How about a quick reference? Or, even better, how about having fewer trash newspapers to start with?

The problem is here in the US, almost every newspaper makes a real effort-- there are about 3 that don't, and everybody knows their names. (And I believe the Weekly World News went online-only now anyway.)

Re:Daily Star?

[expatriot]

Telegraph is read by those that run the country, the Times is read by those that think they run the country, the Guardian and Independent are red by people who would like to run the country, the people who read the Sun, Star, Daily Mail, and Mirror don't care who runs the country as long as they have big tits.

Right to left wing

Telegraph, Times, Independent, Guardian

The best are opportunistic populist papers

Re:Daily Star?

[tehcyder]

Look, we Americans have no idea which UK newspapers are trash and which aren't. How about a quick reference? Or, even better, how about having fewer trash newspapers to start with?

The problem is here in the US, almost every newspaper makes a real effort-- there are about 3 that don't, and everybody knows their names. (And I believe the Weekly World News went online-only now anyway.)

In descending order of quality:the main daily papers are: Guardian, Independent, Times , Financial Times, Telegraph, Daily Mirror, Daily Mail, Daily Express, Sun, Star, Sport.

Incidentally, judging from the websites of most US newspapers I've had the misfortune to follow links to, they are overwhelmingly a mixture of humourlessness, bigotry and blandness that makes the Sun read like Samuel Johnson in comparison.

Tabloids on slashdot?

[Anonymous Coward]

Surprised at the amount of articles that are appearing here that come from newspapers that in the UK have a record of poor journalism. Wouldn't have took long to get an article from a more respected source.

Wikileaks to blame!

[toetagger]

Obviously, this is all the fault of wikileaks & Julian Assange! It was his actions that awoke the appetite of the general public to consume dangerous information that they are not allowed to have. Even the safeguards put in place by the government to protect its people from such dangerous information, the Freedom of Information Act, is now no longer effective. We need to pass new legislation quickly to correct this issue at once!

Therefore, I submit the following legislation for review:
1) Make using Copy/Paste illegal
2) Remove the color black from all computer monitors
3) Imprison anyone with a daily subscription to The Sun, as they have been exposed to this dangerous information and need to be contained.

With these 3 simple steps, we can insure the security of our nuclear submarines, and therefore our people, for the next 100 years!

Re:Wikileaks to blame!

[Sarten-X]

As a software developer, I like your first idea...

Re:Wikileaks to blame!

[Anonymous Coward]

Hello,

1) Make using Copy/Paste illegal

here in Germany this will not happen, because our (former) defense minister needs this feature: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-12504347

More likely they will censor search engine results.

Best Regards,
Jörg

the actual news

[johnjones]

DO NOT look at the Star newspaper it's like looking at the national inquirer....

the people who broke the news where UK channel 4

see this link for the story

http://www.channel4.com/news/britains-nuclear-subs-potentially-vulnerable-to-accidents

the document seems flattened but is here
http://robedwards.typepad.com/files/declassified-report-to-mod-defence-board.pdf/a

anyone actually able to copy and paste from it ?

why does the MOD use microsoft word for these type of things is beyond me...

regards

John Jones

p.s. do you think china et. al. have the same problems...

Re:the actual news

[Anonymous Coward]

why does the MOD use microsoft word for these type of things is beyond me...

Because: a) they are huge fans of MS (MOSS everywhere, for example);
b) getting approval to get Acrobat writer and/or decent redaction software is more trouble than it's worth (see first point)

Re:the actual news

[Anonymous Coward]

You are confusing the March "UK channel 4" story with a recent Freedom of Information request on nuclear sub. It's after the request that MoD published the supposedly blacked-out article but it wasn't, as per the Daily Star story.

Re:the actual news

[Mark Hood]

Actually the channel 4 item doesn't mention botched redactions - they're talking about the parts of the document you can read.

They even say:
"UK submarines compare poorly with these benchmarks, with the ability to tolerate only a structural failure equivalent to a..." Unfortunately the rest of the sentence, along with most of the following two pages, are blacked out in the released document.

So it was the Daily Star who tried the old trick of copy-paste and got lucky.

Re:the actual news

[Anonymous Coward]

forget that wheres the link to page 3?

Re:the actual news

[Anonymous Coward]

The document was only "Restricted" prior to being declassified.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classified_information_in_the_United_Kingdom#System_of_classification

The security checks to view "Restricted" UK material are at best limited.

Re:the actual news

[Anonymous Coward]

:( confucius say :(
darn, copy-n-paste no work in PDF, but fine government already have copy, thank you.

Excerpt from Reactor Guide

[mcnster]

This reactor is equipped with bi-aperture loading facilities--fuel rods can be inserted in either aperture, or as we say in Her Majesty's Navy, "There is NO wrong hole." (with apologies to the late George Carlin)

They probably do like the police

[slackzilly]

don't hire people if they are smart.

It's not the user's fault

[purplie]

Most users are non-technical. This is an old issue and it's not excusable that the application didn't give a warning.

Re:It's not the user's fault

[TheRaven64]

How would the application know? The user is just drawing a black rectangle, or changing the background colour of the text. Deleting data from a PDF is easy - it's all stored as a dictionary of objects, and it's trivial to replace an object with a different one (you can do it in a text editor, and vim will even syntax highlight the PDF markup for you) - but if you use a drawing tool instead of a redaction tool in a graphical editor then that's user error. The user fundamentally needs to know the difference between adding information to a document and removing information. A tool that warns a user whenever they draw a rectangle that they're not redacting data would be insanely irritating.

Re:It's not the user's fault

[Alain Williams]

Most users are non-technical.

Management should ensure that those should be properly trained to do their job. Those responsible for putting stuff on web sites (or where ever) should know what they are doing. Would it be acceptable to say ''he blew up the nuclear sub because he didn't know how to manage the reactor'' ?

This is an old issue and it's not excusable that the application didn't give a warning.

The application was probably instructed to turn the background black, it was probably not instructed to make certain text unreadable.

This is a management issue but, as ever, I can see them just blaming some muppet at the bottom of the pile.

Re:It's not the user's fault

[MichaelSmith]

The other day the administrator in my department was organising a project to electronically sign all documents. Thats how they describe it anyway. They are going to scan a bunch of written signatures and paste them in to the documents which are "signed". There will be a directory (sorry, "folder") full of signatures to choose from.

Re:It's not the user's fault

[grumbel]

How would the application know?

If (background == foreground) {
    printf("Thats not doing what you want\n");
}

If the user is drawing a black rectangle over stuff the app could be clever enough to clip away everything that gets overdrawn instead of storing it in the file when doing PDF export (might help performance too).

The user fundamentally needs to know the difference between adding information to a document and removing information

When working with sensitive information that certainly couldn't hurt, that however doesn't excuse applications doing a shitty job in support the user doing that (metadata generally hidden down in some deep submenu, thus easily exported by accident, there might not even exist functionality to securely black out text in the first place, etc.).

Re:It's not the user's fault

[WrongSizeGlass]

Um, this was a PDF so Adobe was involved. Adobe has shown on countless occasions that they have no idea what security is or should be. I'm surprised they didn't offer to remove the 'black' for them if they bought the 'Redact the Redactions' plugin for a mere $199.95.

Re:It's not the user's fault

[WrongSizeGlass]

Does this mean anyone who wants to sign a document as, say, the administrator of your department can use his signature with a simple copy & paste? If so you should issue a memo, "signed" by the administrator, announcing the cancelation of the "electronic signature project". ;-)

Re:It's not the user's fault

[JustOK]

Make up one for Venus de Milo

Re:It's not the user's fault

[TubeSteak]

They are going to scan a bunch of written signatures and paste them in to the documents which are "signed". There will be a directory (sorry, "folder") full of signatures to choose from.

This is modded +5 funny, but it is tragically common in the medical and professional world.
A lot of doctor's offices are printing out pre-signed perscriptions on 8x11 instead of hand writing/signing on perscription pads whose paper has security features.

Re:It's not the user's fault

[Nimey]

The right way to do this, of course, is setting up a public-key cryptography infrastructure and users using their individual keys to sign documents. MS Word, for example, natively supports this if you have a PKI it groks.

Re:It's not the user's fault

[donscarletti]

I think the Royal Navy of all military branches has the least excuse, since naval warfare has been a completely technical endeavor for the last 400 years. These are people who's lives are spent operating giant multi-billion dollar nuclear armed fighting platforms. These are people who's job it is to make sure they know every bolt in the ship and have a command structure in place so that nobody can screw up and sink the ship. Somehow not only did one person not actually remove the information, but the command structure that is meant to prevent such screwups failed to prevent the information from leaking.

Also, your expectations of computers are too high, what do you expect "Hi, it looks like you are redacting a classified naval document, would you like help?", it is the computer's job to obey when someone asks for black rectangles, it is a human's job to protect strategic objectives.

Re:It's not the user's fault

[SvnLyrBrto]

> If the user is drawing a black rectangle over stuff the app could be clever enough
> to clip away everything that gets overdrawn instead of storing it in the file when doing
> PDF export (might help performance too).

But that's not necessarily what the user wants in every circumstance. For example: Just off the top of my head, I know of a couple of websites devoted, in part, to discussion of television shows or movies. The etiquette of those sites. for both users and authors, is to set the text and background the same color when there are major spoilers. And if you want to read them, you highlight the area and the text appears. Another website publishes hint sheets for games... akin to the old invisi-clue books for Infocom games which came with the marker to reveal the hints... where the text and background deliberately the same color so the user can reveal them just as he needs them.

How is the application to know the difference?

Now, maybe there could or should be specialized word processor software certified specifically for dealing with classified documents (Or perhaps it already exists.); which would behave as you described. But your behavior would not be correct or appropriate for a general-purpose tool. And, in this case, the user decided to use the wrong tool for the job. And the fault lies with said user, not the software or its developers.

Re:It's not the user's fault

[grumbel]

How is the application to know the difference?

By looking if the user does a PDF export or a regular save as Word document, the former should reduce the document to only the visible parts, the later one of course has all the hidden information.

Its easy to ridicule such mistakes, but I couldn't even tell you how to not make them as a regular user with the software at hand, as text redaction doesn't even seem to be in the feature set of your average Word processor and isn't easily replicated with manual effort (just overwriting the text would destroy the layout with proportional fonts).

Re:It's not the user's fault

[John Newman]

A lot of doctor's offices are printing out pre-signed perscriptions on 8x11 instead of hand writing/signing on perscription pads whose paper has security features.

But for controlled substances, US pharmacies still require, and all doctors use, secure prescriptions with real signatures and a valid DEA identifier. When filled, the prescription is recorded in a national database referring to the patient, the doctor, and the pharmacy. Those printed 8.5x11 rx's are for stuff like blood pressure meds that no one really cares about, and can't be used for more interesting stuff. If you really want to forge a metoprolol script and sell the extra on a street corner, go ahead.

I am modestly surprised that there isn't a bigger black market for the more expensive (but non-controlled) prescription drugs, but I guess it's easier to get them from Canada than risk a dealer.

Re:It's not the user's fault

[Ivoch]

If (background == foreground) { printf("Thats not doing what you want\n"); }

Yes, because someone couldn't possibly want to make a walkthrough with highlight-able spoilers or something like that...

Re:It's not the user's fault

[bickerdyke]

If the user is drawing a black rectangle over stuff the app could be clever enough to clip away everything that gets overdrawn instead of storing it in the file when doing PDF export (might help performance too).

That's definitly NOT what you want when preparing a pdf for printing. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trap_(printing)

And about that performance issue..... It's faster to draw three rectangles on top of each other than three times drawing a rectangle, cutting out the clipped part, and then draw thavever was supposed to fill in the clipped holes. That would be only true if simple geometries hide complex geometries.

Re:It's not the user's fault

[tehcyder]

How would the application know?

"You seem to be making the newbie error of not redacting Top Secret Information correctly. Would you like help submitting your tearful resignation letter to HR before you're found out and tried under the Official Secrets Act? Yes/No/Help"

Oh Great!

[Greyfox]

Now everyone's going to have one! Oh well, nothing for it but to start building a nuclear sub in my basement. I'm glad I kept all those old coffee cans around...

Better BBC link

[Anonymous Coward]

The Daily Star doesn't cost very much in the UK because they don't need to pay for clothes for some of the models.

Here's the BBC link: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-13107413.

Apparently something to do with blacking out parts of a report but the text still being there when you paste it into another document.

Re:Better BBC link

[ColdWetDog]

The Daily Star doesn't cost very much in the UK because they don't need to pay for clothes for some of the models.

Funny, that's never worked for any woman that I knew....

99.999% of worid pop. forced into mormonity

[Anonymous Coward]

not alarming (unless you are one of the unchosen), or even a really big crowd, as the opposing population is to be tithed out to god, prior to the commencement of the official coronations, adulations & propagations of our new earthbound deities. praise be. praise me? sounds weird,,, again

WYSWYG mindset strikes again

[introcept]

The problem is using programs that advertise themselves as WYSWYG editors when in fact they're not.

Now it's unreasonable to expect the every computer-literate but non-expert user to understand the data format, encoding and specific behaviour of every document editor. The blame here rests solely on the management that should have trained users how to manipulate sensitive documents using approved tools.

Re:WYSWYG mindset strikes again

[JamesP]

Approved tools: Notepad and the 'delete' and 'backspace' keys

Re:WYSWYG mindset strikes again

[Anonymous Coward]

"The problem is using programs that advertise themselves as WYSWYG editors when in fact they're not."

No, the solution is easy, and it's inspired from the MPAA solution to getting fair use access to videos for legitimate purposes: point a camera at the computer screen and capture a series of pictures of the document, one page at a time, and then provide the images :-)

Re:WYSWYG mindset strikes again

[Anonymous Coward]

A little common sense would suggest that a WYSIWYG editor will produce exactly what you see; blacked out text that you can select and change the background color for again. If anything, I think it's a misunderstanding about the nature of transforming a structured document into another structured document. Structure-preserving transformations are complex and even experts can make mistakes. History-preserving transformations are even worse from an information security perspective and I recall several releases of Word documents when the Undo history still embedded and releasing sensitive information.

The blame here rests solely on the management that should have trained users how to manipulate sensitive documents using approved tools.

Sadly, the approved tools for sensitive documents are almost certainly "Microsoft Word" and "Adobe Acrobat." I doubt there exists a secure method of using either of these tools for redaction purposes.

RTFD

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you actually LOOKED at the document?

Its original classification was "RESTRICTED - UK EYES ONLY" which is basically a rather quaint old fashioned form of "UK RESTRICTED".

RESTRICTED is the lowest level that requires any special handling to speak of. We would tend to assume that foreign intelligence agencies already have everything that is RESTRICTED.

CONFIDENTIAL is the lowest level at which any serious effort is taken to prevent FISs getting hold of the information, and then exponentially more protective measures are taken as one moves through SECRET and TOP SECRET.

So whilst embarrassing, it doesn't contain anything that any halfway competent FIS would not have already been aware.

Move on, nothing to see here....

Re:RTFD

[moderators_are_w*nke]

That said, the person releasing it is still liable for 30+ years in jail for a breach of the official secrets act.

Re:RTFD

[Anonymous Coward]

Highly doubt it. Not for only Restricted data.

It is another demonstration of the media either not knowing about, or deliberately misrepresenting the different security levels. The Daily Star (and indeed this Slashdot) article refers to the information as 'Secrets' when it is nothing of the sort.

Re:RTFD

[Anonymous Coward]

So while embarrassing, it doesn't contain anything that any halfway competent FIS would not have already been aware.

FTFY

Re:RTFD

[Kagura]

Interesting, you are indeed correct that "Restricted" is a level underneath "Confidential". In the U.S., "Restricted" is used for secrets relating to nuclear weapons design and production and is obviously taken very seriously.

Re:RTFD

[Anonymous Coward]

You miss the whole point of 'security' classifications. Apart from immediate short-term security classification of pending military actions, classification is aimed at preventing citizens knowing what the government is up to. As you say, any competent, and hence potentially dangerous, FIS will be aware of such stuff anyway. Remember we are the government's enemy - c.f. the reaction to Wikileaks.

Re:RTFD

[2sheds]

As Bernard Woolley put it in Yes Prime Minister - "That's one of those irregular verbs, isn't it? *I* give confidential security briefings. *You* leak. *He* has been charged under section 2a of the Official Secrets Act."

Re:RTFD

[Anonymous Coward]

No they aren't. Sure, they committed the act (actus rea) but they don't have a guilty mind (mens rea). You need both of those elements for a conviction in a common law court.

Re:RTFD

[Blakey Rat]

And FIS stands for... International Ski Federation? Fiber Instrument Sales? Something about collections in Brazil? A nucleoid-associated protein in E. Coli?

Seriously, you can't just pull acronyms OUT OF YOUR ASS. If it's not in the top 3 results on Google, please define the fucking thing before using it.

Unless you don't give a shit whether anybody understands what you're talking about, in which case, carry on-- you're doing a good job.

Re:RTFD

[floodo1]

It's not out of his ass. Try the Wikipedia disambiguation page which states:

Foreign Intelligence Service - a term used by an Intelligence Service/Intelligence Agency to describe their (foreign) counterparts.

Another one

[KingofSpades]

Another occurence of this type of error happened before in the Calipari Report

And the secret was...

[rossdee]

The Conqueror fired first.

People Make Mistakes

[Anonymous Coward]

Sometimes people just make honest mistakes, no one is perfect. Any one of you have made errors in judgement, which is how you learn not to make them. Granted this one in particular seems to be a rather stupid mistake, but it's a mistake none-the-less. I think people should be more shocked that we're using Fukushima-like reactors in a majority of nuclear submarines instead! And, there are almost a thousand submarines, if not more, in the ocean at the moment.

Re:People Make Mistakes

[Kilrah_il]

I agree that mistakes can, and will, happen. However, I would have thought the government had protocols on how to redact documents. For example, in physical (i.e. Not digital) documents you do not use Tipp-Ex but a special ink.
The decision of how to redact a digital document should be solved by people who are really knowledgable in the field, and thus you prevent the mistake from happening.

Oops ...

[lennier1]

Sounds like someone will soon be transferred to clean radar dishes in Antarctica.

Re:Oops ...

[Anonymous Coward]

That's my job you insensitive clod !

Or /. could drop this April 1st BS altogether.

[Anonymous Coward]

It long ago stopped being funny or amusing. No I just avoid reading it on April 1st.

Sure...

[denzacar]

The user fundamentally needs to know the difference between adding information to a document and removing information.

Sure, because that is the way it is in the real life, right?
When you paint a black rectangle over a piece of text you are adding information to that piece of paper. When you paint it all black it is positively LOADED with information.
In fact, it has ALL THE INFORMATION EVER right there on that black page - you just need to extract it out of there.

And don't get me started on those white pages that people think of as blank. HA!
I "borrowed" a piece of paper from a classmate back in school - he didn't even know it had every book ever written, every movie ever made, every piece of music ever recorded right there on it.
Including some that never existed in our universe (or ever will).

If you'll excuse me now, I'm off to watch the fourth and fifth Star Wars trilogy on it again. Han shoots first all the time.

Re:Sure...

[Anonymous Coward]

The user fundamentally needs to know the difference between adding information to a document and removing information.

Sure, because that is the way it is in the real life, right?

Nope, which is precisely why users need to be taught "the difference between adding information to a document and removing information" when working with computers.

Re:Sure...

[OeLeWaPpErKe]

And a highschool chemistry lab probably contains all you need to read exactly what was under the blacked out portions of a "real" document too. If they used those thick pens to black out printed ink (e.g. laserprinter ink), all you need is some alcohol. Of course, in the general case, it requires a bit of knowledge.

But If you're lucky with the paper type, all you need is a lightbulb.

Laserprinter ink can be made to perform an especially cool trick, saving a lot of time. For at least 48 hours after printing the ink will still attract other pieces of metal (not big ones, obviously). So no matter how well it's blacked out, metal filings can easily reveal whatever was printed. Just drop em on the paper and shake it a little bit.

Re:Sure...

[maxwell demon]

When you paint it all black it is positively LOADED with information.

No. It is loaded with color, but it isn't loaded with information.
But then, even with physical blacking, doing it wrong might keep the information recoverable. Of course with physical documents they probably wouldn't publish the original, but a copy. And that copy would only contain what you can see. So maybe what they should introduce is a "photocopy" software for PDFs which removes any information which cannot be seen with the naked eye.

Re:Sure...

[Anthony Mouse]

What I've seen people do in meatspace is to get out the black marker, black out the parts they want redacted, then photocopy it and distribute the copy but keep/destroy the one that actually has the marker on it.

Re:Sure...

[Anthony Mouse]

So maybe what they should introduce is a "photocopy" software for PDFs which removes any information which cannot be seen with the naked eye.

That isn't the problem. They already have things that effectively do that.

The problem is that not all programs do that automatically, and stupid people are stupid.

Re:Sure...

[denzacar]

Yeah... right after you teach them not to use 5 letter passwords.

Re:Sure...

[denzacar]

I was making fun of the parent poster's approach of teaching users about "difference between adding information to a document and removing information".
Cause that is what user is really thinking about when writing/reading/erasing/masking - adding information or not.

Unlike say... maybe... thinking about writing/reading/erasing/masking.

Users don't think about what those abstractions they are using ACTUALLY represent.
Easiest fool-proof solution probably is to get them a special easy-to-use tool for JUST THAT and pound it into their heads to use only THAT TOOL for masking out sensitive information.
Make it common practice.

That way, when some user who didn't get the proper education on how to mask out sensitive info gets into the community, at least you'll have the "do as everyone else does" working for you.

Re:Sure...

[SvnLyrBrto]

Exactly.

And there is a fairly easy computerized analog to your approach:

Make your changes in whatever fancy content generation software your organization uses. Then export and distribute the redacted documents as bitmaps or plaintext or any of a dozen other file formats which do not store all of of the hidden (but easily found) metadata as word or pdf.

Re:Sure...

[Richy_T]

Uh, using a word processor is real life.

Unless you count those word-processor-simulator using weirdos.

Re:Sure...

[bickerdyke]

Laserprinter Ink?

Re:Sure...

[cbiltcliffe]

Then export and distribute the redacted documents as bitmaps or plaintext or any of a dozen other file formats which do not store all of of the hidden (but easily found) metadata as word or pdf.

I agree with you, but how is the end user to know what these file formats are?

I've seen people who wanted to write a quick note of a phone number fire up Word to do it.

Instead of a 10 byte text file, they end up with a 50K or so word document, with all sorts of extra crap in it, and they have no idea.
As far as the user is concerned, they're both text.

Re:Sure...

[Anthony Mouse]

Not only that, the "turn it into a picture" method has the disadvantage of making the non-redacted portions of it cease to be text formatted, which is totally annoying. Not to mention turning efficient, easily-compressible text into an image 100 times as big after compression.

Re:Sure...

[SvnLyrBrto]

> I agree with you, but how is the end user to know what these file formats are?

How does an auto mechanic know which tasks require a crescent wrench and which tasks require a torque wrench? Part of having a job is being familiar with the tools of your trade. And if your job description includes: "redact classified information from documentation that is to be released publicly" it is your own responsibility to know what tools are appropriate to the task.

Re:Sure...

[tehcyder]

> I agree with you, but how is the end user to know what these file formats are?

How does an auto mechanic know which tasks require a crescent wrench and which tasks require a torque wrench? Part of having a job is being familiar with the tools of your trade. And if your job description includes: "redact classified information from documentation that is to be released publicly" it is your own responsibility to know what tools are appropriate to the task.

No, it's your superiors' responsibility to properly train and equip subordinates engaged in sensitive tasks

Re:Sure...

[cbiltcliffe]

> I agree with you, but how is the end user to know what these file formats are?

How does an auto mechanic know which tasks require a crescent wrench and which tasks require a torque wrench? Part of having a job is being familiar with the tools of your trade. And if your job description includes: "redact classified information from documentation that is to be released publicly" it is your own responsibility to know what tools are appropriate to the task.

Unless you want your I.T. department to be the only ones that ever redact information in the organization, this analogy is not appropriate.

Although if I.T. hasn't set up good backups, they may be redacting information on a grand scale at some point....

Importance of sub warefare against Taliban

[edxwelch]

I think these nuclear subs are well worth the expense. How else will Britain deal with Taliban aircraft carriers?

Page 3 link for you...

[chfriley]

You asked:
http://www.dailystar.co.uk/babes/ :-)

They were actually quite clever this time

[Gnavpot]

Everybody knows by now that you can't hide anything in a PDF by putting a black rectangle above the text.
But these people were clever and carefully avoided doing this old stupid mistake which they knew so many people had done before.

Instead, they put the black rectangle BEHIND the black text...

(By the way: I think I have seen somewhere that the black rectangles above the text is actually the way it must be done in USA according to some instructions from the government. Anyone can confirm this?)

Fukushima-style reactor meltdown

[Shienarier]

"This accidental leak reveals, among many other things, how easy it would be to cause a Fukushima-style reactor meltdown in a sub"

You subject it to an 8.0 richter earthquake?

UFO's...

[MattBD]

Things like this are the single biggest reason I think UFO conspiracy theories are just plain silly. If there were secret contact with aliens, there'd be no hope whatsoever of any government keeping the whole thing under wraps. Someone would be bound to leave a flash drive on a train or something.

Re:UFO's...

[maxwell demon]

You forget: In the case of UFOs, extraterrestrials are involved. It's no problem for an alien to beam away a flash drive which some government agent forgot. :-)

I misread title as McD

[syockit]

When I first saw the title of the post, I thought the global icon of capitalism was actually just another instrument for USA's imperialism, trying to expose secret documents of all other governments in the world! The error would be such that when a navy member munches on a quarter pounder, the chemical substances contained in the food will react with the brain and reprogram it into thinking the host is a US patriot, and thus having the urge of performing espionage missions.

Man, I really have to move to one of those tin-foil coated house ASAP. At least it'll make me less paranoid.

Re:I misread title as McD

[mjwx]

When I first saw the title of the post

I'm Australian so I instantly recognised MoD as Ministry of Defence. But seeing as you bought it up, last time I ate McD's I had a Fukushima type reaction. Secret or not, a lot of paper was needed to clean it up.

Professional Sabotage

[__aaxtnf2500]

All the report says is that a nuclear engineer onboard could intentionally cause a meltdown. This is hardly salacious, anyone familiar with nuclear training programs would know that the training given to such engineers on cross-disciplinary systems and specific safeguards guarantees that an intelligent nuclear engineer onboard could disable the safety systems preventing overpower or prompt criticality. There are sufficient safeguards in place to prevent a rogue agent from significantly damaging a military reactor. The watchstanding and operations systems of military reactors and nuclear weapons control systems were designed to prevent serious damage by Soviet agents, and these systems will protect against the "rogue sailor."

Re:Professional Sabotage

[ShooterNeo]

You seem pretty blithely confident in your assertions there.

Re:Professional Sabotage

[__aaxtnf2500]

I am absolutely confident in those assertions.

Re:Professional Sabotage

[ShooterNeo]

A small bomb or a soldering iron, perhaps? All your assumptions are that the safety hardware in intact, not sabotaged, and no one has hot wired the battle overrides. Also, that no one has destructively blown a gaping hole in a crucial bit of piping. All that failure analysis for stuff like high pressure steam lines is done assuming leaks that come from a progressive material failure - not someone blasting the pipes into pieces.

Also, you're assuming all these safety measures actually work according to the designer's assumptions. But many of the emergency core cooling systems are not routinely exposed to the conditions they are supposed to work under.

Re:Professional Sabotage

[__aaxtnf2500]

Believe it or not, the safety analyses on military nuclear reactors include combat damage.
Your statement on safety analysis practices is either supposition of fabrication.
Failure analysis for pipe ruptures in nuclear systems is not done assuming the pipe slowly blows out, it's done assuming the pipe instantaneously ceases to exist.
What I am proposing is that sophisticated sabotage would be detected before it can be exploited, not that it cannot be carried out.
This is such crap, you might as well publish an article stating that an internal safety study concluded a bomber pilot with a nuclear weapon on board could crash his plane. The way you mitigate such failures is through personnel measures. Anyone who works in job where such measures are in place understands what I am talking about. This is why you do background investigations, psychological tests, and financial monitoring.

Re:Professional Sabotage

[ShooterNeo]

Look, get real here. You're talking about a large quantity of high dense nuclear fuel, in an application where the WEIGHT matters. Everything you add to protect against a meltdown is going to slow your ship or sub down. Actual, real world accidents show that just 2 or 3 things going wrong - a stuck valve plus some rust somewhere plus a control panel putting critical information somewhere hard to find - is enough to cause serious accidents.

I find it hard to believe that given merely a power loss has destroyed an entire complex of 4 reactors utterly with contamination everywhere that naval reactors could be any better. And causing a power loss is easy - one or two grenades at the right instrument panel. Combine that with a radioactive steam leak to flood the compartment, preventing anyone from repairing the damage, and that's all she wrote.

This is one of the biggest problems with the military - they drink their own koolaid. Yeah, there's safety measures, but blithly saying that they can stop any individual sailor gone rougue is stupid. They might RESIST some attempts to cause a deliberate failure, but there are likely many many vulnerabilities that anyone with the knowledge could find IF they were trying to find them (instead of trying to find evidence to adhere to the official declaration that "it's perfectly safe!"

MOD PARENT UP!

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, you already did. Thanks.

they dont learn

[zerro]

TSA did the same thing a while back with the passenger screening manual. http://boardingarea.com/blogs/thewanderingaramean/2009/12/the-tsa-makes-another-stupid-move/ http://cryptome.org/0001/tsa-ssi-02.htm You would think that they put out a memo on how to properly redact digital documents?

Even smart people are stupid once in a while

[Anonymous Coward]

An stupid people get lucky once in a while.

 

Oops!

[Anonymous Coward]

One of those "Oh, Sh!t!" moments... Doh! as Homer Simpson would say.

HMS Astute - rogue sailor

[Kupfernigk]

I am sure that the USN is incapable of having any major systems failures, anytime, anywhere :( but only last week a "rogue sailor" on HMS Astute killed one officer and wounded another, and was only stopped by a civilian visitor. This is a little worrying on a nuclear submarine. Mind you, HMS Astute has already had an embarrassing "grounding incident" off Skye, so perhaps it's just a jinxed ship.

Re:HMS Astute - rogue sailor

[__aaxtnf2500]

While that sailor was stopped by a civilian visitor, I think it's unreasonable to assume that this could have led to compromising the missile or propulsion systems of that ship. One danger of working around people with guns is that they can shoot you. One person dead, or five people dead, is not a catastrophic failure of an engineered system. One feature of the engineered system that is a ship's security force is that they are trained to kill renegades. This system did not fail in the case of the astute.

MoD = WikiLeaks

[Anonymous Coward]

So there SS HillyBilly and Congress and Barak-O-Vision. Now were is the vitriol about Hanging MoD, sending MoD to Solitary Confinement in Gitmo, where is the DoD declaring a bombing mission to bomb MoD back to the stone age, where is the SJ Holden calling for the assignation of MoD?

Google Cache sees all

[Major Variola (ret)]

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:YAuU8Ek5y4oJ:www.parliament.uk/deposits/depositedpapers/2011/DEP2011-0648.pdf+DEP2011-0648.pdf&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&source=www.google.com Page 1 DECLASSIFIEDRESTRICTED 1 RESTRICTEDDECLASSIFIED DNSR/22/11/2 4 Nov 09SUCCESSOR SSBN SAFETY REGULATORS’ ADVICE ON THE SELECTION OF THE PROPULSION PLANT IN SUPPORT OFTHE FUTURE DETERRENT REVIEW NOTE Issue1. Safety Regulators’ advice to support decisions to be made impacting the design and progress of thesuccessor SSBN.Background2. In response to a request from the SRO, this advice has been prepared by Cdre Andrew McFarlane (theDefence Nuclear Safety Regulator - DNSR), with a ship safety contribution from Mr Gavin Rudgley (the NavalAuthority). It has been reviewed with Mr Howard Mathers (the Chairman of both the Defence Nuclear and theShip Environment and Safety Boards), with the independent Defence Nuclear Safety Committee1 and with DrMike Weightman (HM Chief Inspector of Nuclear Installations)2. 3. The aim is to set out the legal and policy framework within which the project must propose and theDepartment must in due course decide on the appropriate propulsion plant for the successor SSBN, andagainst which both the statutory and internal MOD regulators will review the safety of the acquisition, operationand support of the deterrent, to inform their permissioning of specific activities. It is informed by the analysisand emerging evidence provided by the project of the options under consideration, and the formal review ofthis undertaken by the Reactor Plant Safety Committee and the Project’s Platform Safety Committee.The Legal and Defence Policy Position4. The most significant legislation is the Health and Safety at Work Act (HSWA). Among the manyprovisions of the Act, two are fundamental. There is a duty on employers to ensure, so far as is reasonably practical, the safety of employees,and of others who may be affected by their undertaking. There is a duty on suppliers to ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, that equipment will besafe when it is being used. These provisions are underpinned by a large body of case law. In summary it is always a legal requirement toreduce risks to people so far as is reasonably practical which is commonly expressed as reducing risk as lowas is reasonably practical (ALARP).5. Among the many regulations made under the HSWA, two are particularly significant. The IonisingRadiations Regulations set out the basis on which the radiation risk to employees must be reduced ALARP,and the Radiation Emergencies (Preparedness and Public Information) Regulations set out the basis on whichthe potential consequences from a radiation emergency are to be managed, in order to protect bothemployees and members of the public. 6. The Nuclear Installations Act (NIA) (which is a statutory provision of the HSWA) defines the process tobe followed to demonstrate that the risks to people from nuclear plant are reduced ALARP. The Environment 1 This will be reviewed by DNSC members at their meeting on 10 Nov 09.2 This was undertaken at the Senior Operational Liaison Meeting on 3 Nov 09. Page 2 DECLASSIFIEDRESTRICTED 2 RESTRICTEDDECLASSIFIED Act and the Radioactive Substances Act (RSA) require that the environmental impact of nuclear plant isminimised to the best practicable environmental option using best available techniques – this is synonymouswith reducing the effect on the environment ALARP.7. There are defence exemptions from some aspects of this legislation (notably from the licensingrequirements of the NIA when the submarine reactor plant is intact or under direct crown control, and from theRSA when under direct crown control), but there is no general exemption from the HSWA. Thus the statutoryregulators, the Nuclear Installations Inspect

I blame Microsoft

[JustNiz]

You can bet it was a word document.
I blame Microsoft for the retarded design of all their applications, including Word.

It's the new entry for the Turing Test

[mbkennel]

Asshole Aspie!

(no mister bot writer, that is is not Ad Hominem, it's an insult)

Now I'm scared.

[Minwee]

This accidental leak reveals, among many other things, how easy it would be to cause a Fukushima-style reactor meltdown in a sub

Wow. They could cause a reactor failure that makes the media wet themselves, but somehow doesn't hurt anyone beyond a few cases of first degree burns? That's awe inspiring.

Not sure I trust this

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes yes I know that given the choice between a conspiracy theory and a cockup....

But maybe this wasn't a mistake?

Please, be rigorous

[Anonymous Coward]

where it says

both tails should continue on to infinity,

It should say, as everyone knows,

both tails should continue on to infinity and beyond.

This story has 230 Comments ..

[Anonymous Coward]

This story has 230 Comments .. the vast majority of which are a waste of electricity ...

Pfft, Big Deal.

[DarthVain]

Canada already knows all about the UK's leaky subs.