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

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

[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?

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?

[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 ;-)

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.

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: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 . . .