Slashdot Mirror


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."

10 of 248 comments (clear)

  1. People Are Stupid by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

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

    Simple: The vast majority of people are stupid.

  2. Fukushima-style? by neokushan · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "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.

    --
    +1 IDisagreeSoHeMustBeATrollOrAnAstroturferOrAShill
    1. Re:Fukushima-style? by Kilrah_il · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

      --
      Whenever in an argument, remember this.
    2. Re:Fukushima-style? by Kronotross · · Score: 5, Funny

      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.

    3. Re:Fukushima-style? by TheSync · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

  3. Re:Daily Star? by PolygamousRanchKid+ · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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 . . .

    --
    Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
  4. Re:It's not the user's fault by MichaelSmith · · Score: 5, Funny

    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.

  5. Re:It's not the user's fault by WrongSizeGlass · · Score: 5, Funny

    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". ;-)

  6. Re:hahaha by PhunkySchtuff · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

  7. Re:It's not the user's fault by TubeSteak · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

    --
    [Fuck Beta]
    o0t!