Slashdot Mirror
British MPs Warn of 'Fatal' Cyber Warfare Strategy
judgecorp writes "British Members of Parliament have warned that the UK's cyber warfare strategy is getting it wrong. According to a defense committee report, the country's IT security forces are inadequately prepared for a cyber attack, rely too heavily on inadequately protected systems, and do not sufficiently appreciate the difficulty of attributing the source of an attack."
Where the US leads, the UK follows...
Also "attribution" does not help when your main enemy is Islam. The attackers could be in Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, or Wolverhampton.
do not sufficiently appreciate the difficulty of attributing the source of an attack
And they were so happy when they successfully traced the latest attack to user "goatse" at fbi.gov.
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
A whole damn new system, built on IPv4 when it could have easily been done in IPv6.
The people in charge of networking the government are either straight out of college or are 87 and almost for snuffing it.
They have absolutely no clue.
It is a shame as well because I have a friend who is actually brilliant with networking, completely jobless and literally got "stood up" on a job interview the other day by some computer repairs and refurbishment company.
So many others who would have done a better job as well. Probably still jobless.
Not only that, the NHS computing system is horribly broken in general as well.
The inability for remote interviews to be done is pretty crippling too.
I was just in for a check-up recently that was held up by 1.5 hours because most of the doctors weren't in that day because of illness.
ONE doctor had to take up the majority of interviews, others cancelled for another time.
Now just imagine if those doctors had access to their systems for remote interviews.
They could have a nurse in if any examinations were required, to help with moving the camera or feel stomachs or whatever else.
This is such an incredibly simple system to setup and would help greatly.
But there was that poor guy having to probably rush check-ups and possibly even put people at risk.
The government seriously need to rethink their computing systems from the absolutely lowest levels all the way up.
It is horribly outdated, and a few additions to it could save millions in money, and even save lives.
As a programmer, I would love to help, but given illness I'd likely not get the job anyway. (and worse, probably going to be accused of being lazy in the coming year with the new push for getting people in to jobs when my illness is activated by long periods of activity, including mental, hell, especially mental, programming is a pain in the ass, even if I have been doing it since 9!)
Ah, lovely!
And they were so happy when they successfully traced the latest attack to user "goatse" at fbi.gov.
You mean Goatse was able to expose their gaping hole?
The government's response to the report will be "We will do anything it takes to resolve these issues as long as it doesn't cost anything and our users do not have to change their behavior."
This posting is provided 'AS IS' without warranty of any kind, implied or otherwise.
This is the UK. Won't the solution be to install monitoring devices on everyone's computer and send out TV license^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H cybersecurity officers to ensure compliance? Or maybe ban long, pointy^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H encrypted communications?
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
"The current government pumped an extra £650 million into cyber security in 2011. Most – £157 million – has gone on “national sovereign capability to detect and defeat high end threats”, as shown in the chart below. By comparison, £28 million has gone to police via the Home Office, and £31 million to the Ministry of Defence."
Pork much? Our servers are attacked all the time, we don't call it 'cyber-war' and waste hundreds of millions avoiding cyber-geddon!
Government does not secure any critical network but their own comms. What 'national sovereign capability to detect and defeat high end threats???', the bullshitted are pulling the wool over MP's eye. Give it a fancy title, scream danger danger and get as much money out as you can!
their internet condom has holes. abstinence is the best policy when it comes to the internet and dangerious technology..
Have gnu, will travel.
"GCHQ estimates that 80% or more of currently successful cyber attacks could be defeated by simple best practice, such as updating anti-virus software regularly" link
Don't rely upon IT for anything critical. E.g. do not make nuclear launch consoles that are internet enabled.
You'd think we'd learn from other countries failures too, but we don't AT ALL. Half the political viewpoints expressed on Slashdot have been proven to be disastrous because other countries have tried them repeatedly, yet we ignore that and expect it to work.
Examples: Communist Russia was one of the poorest countries, and failed. Now, fully embracing capitalism, Russia is a success story (in the context of global recession.) So in the US, we've decided to try moving further toward communism. Another example is "gun control". Straight gun laws ALWAYS result in a noticeable increase in comment crime. England banned guns and violent crime DOUBLED. So now the many in the US want to try the same thing?
"Mr. Minister, you do, of course, have the telephone numbers of all the sysops of the major IT hubs and backbones?"
"What's that?"
"It's the people in charge of actual large-scale networking computer hardw..."
"No, I mean tele-fone wut?"
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
No, what makes it socialist, aka "moving in the direction of communism" is when the government starts owning major businesses. When president says he plans to "exercise ownership and management" of auto companies, that's the definition of socialism.
Another way of looking at it at is that absolute communism is a 100% tax rate - the government controls ALL of the money. Socialism is where the government controls a lot of the money, around 50%, and capitalism is when the money is controlled by those who earn it. Liberals in the US argue for total tax rates of 50% or more, meaning the government would control most of the money, putting us more than halfway to absolute communism.
Words DO have meaning, and the Democrat platform perfectly fits the meaning of the word "socialism". If you don't like that, either stop supporting the platform or get comfortable with the fact that you're expousing socialism, because "socialism" is what it's called when the president "exercises ownership and management" of the country's major companies.