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Fears of Olympic Cyber Attack Detailed After Snooping Revealed
First time accepted submitter Dr_Ish writes "The BBC is reporting that the opening ceremonies of last the Olympics last year were potentially subject to a cyber attack that could have cut all the lights and power. Of course, it did not happen. However, the interesting question is whether this is real, or whether this is a FUD story promoted by GCHQ to help shore up some credibility issues."
Proof ? Any credible material, anywhere ? No ? Then walk on, people. Nothing to see here. News at eleven.
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
Last week I prevented the prevention of the prevention to take place preventing the mishaps that prevents you from using preventative steps.
You didn't know all that because I prevented you from hearing about it until now. Please thank me and bow to your preventive overlord.
Coulda, Shoulda, Woulda...
It also happened that the whole audience AND the torchbearer disappeared. The Doctor fixed that. Then the Cracks in Time made everybody forgot. Same would happen with any Cyber-Attack. Can't vouch for any "upgraded" limeys, however.
Geeks are so full of shit that "beating the crap out of them" takes a whole new meaning.
A government of liars cannot be trusted. Whether the story is actually FUD or not doesn't really matter. We must greet every bit of information with skepticism... assume every story is FUD. The only thing we know for sure is that we don't know the whole truth.
"Here Lies Philip J. Fry, named for his uncle, to carry on his spirit"
I smell more government/industry stirred bullshit along the lines of the rest of the "we must have absolute control of the internets0rs because hax0rs will kill everyone and destroy the world" garbage we've had shoved down our throats the last five years. In exactly what reality would you have your fucking lights and power connected to the internet, exactly...?
Just imagine the horror, the horror! The primary lights and AV systems could have gone out, forcing the audience to endure the inconvenience of use the emergency exit lighting systems that(as a new venue) would have been legally obligated to comply with the relevant portions of British Standard 5266, and possibly other similar regulations(unless some Olympic Comittee weasel bent that rule, or somebody hired G4S to handle it...)
Clearly, when a problem could either be reliably solved with some lead-acid batteries and a few LED light strips, or possibly, not guarantees solved by ubiquitous surveillance of all IP communications in, to/from, or through the United Kingdom, Our Choice Is Obvious!
I am pretty sure that the fear of "terrorists" turning off the lights at a stadium is a good reason to throw away my personal freedoms!
Oh no, the Olympics might have temporarily lost lighting. How fucking terrible. I guess we better spy on everyone in the world then. Never again can we allow such an alleged tragedy to happen. Imagine how all of the people who are watching without a tape delay would feel! And imagine how much money the IOC would lose!
Never was so much owed so many to so few. I'm not talking about the brave cyberwarriors and cybersnoops who saved the world. I'm talking about the public being bent over by the IOC staff.
http://edition.cnn.com/2013/02/08/us/superdome-power-outage anyone? Did civilization end?
The Olympics maybe big, but is just a business like any other. They hack it as much they want, I don't give a damn. There are more important things. Actually they would be doing us a favour if they hacked it, the idols and big brother.
In most fields, when you say that something is going to happen, but then it doesn't, then that means you were wrong. In secret intelligence, if you say something is going to happen, but it doesn't, then that means that you prevented it.
You don't need pervasive spying to know that someone might try to hack into the electrical system during a highly publicized event, so the big takeway from this is that apparently they were not prepared for this kind of likely attack if they had to take any action to prevent the attack once they received the "credible threat" -- they should have already been prepared for a cyber attack... maybe some of the intelligence money would be better spent on preventative measures.
GCHQ found a 'credible' threat that someone might turn the lights off during the opening ceremony and warned officials to have a contingency plan.
Officials posted a team of techs prepared to manually turn the lights back on if necessary. That's all they had time to do.
The threat never materialized and a bunch of techs were bored for a while.
In other words, it was exactly like that Mayan calendar thing. However 'credible' they found the threat, there was simply nothing to it and nothing was averted.
Every night, probably millions of parents spray 'monster spray' under their small child's bed. They must be more powerful than Ultraman.
A few years ago the UK government leaked the story that there was a crack team of Islamic terrorists equipped with surface to air missiles ready to launch a "spectacular" attack. These extremists had based themselves in west London near Heathrow airport and were planning an imminent attack. In response the government sent 400 troops and tanks to the airport. Strangely no arrests were ever made and no missiles were ever recovered and the whole event was quickly forgotten. When did this happen ? about 5 weeks before the invasion of Iraq.
FYI - we are also 'potentially subject' to an asteroid strike.
According to research people are more afraid of things they don't understand well (like cyber attacks, terrorism, nuclear energy) than things they do understand well (like train or car accidents), even if the number or deaths is much higher for the second category.
Expect government agencies to go all out on cyber attacks. It sounds dangerous and nobody asks for details or proof.
"Who are you going to trust - your lying eyes, or scumbag spooks already caught in a manifold of lies?"
Weak sauce, GCHQ.
So when does the story leak about what really happened during this year's Super Bowl?
Absolute complete bullshit. The National Grid is not connected to the internet.
Such an attack would only be possible, if it was possible to control the lights and power over the Internet in the first place, right?
So who's the idiot, who decided that was a good idea?
Until the responsible idiot comes forward and admits that he/she is an idiot, I'm going to say "Pics^H^H^H^HProof or it didn't happen!".
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3948321&cid=44215203
you can expect a few more of these "see its freedom surveillance!" stories in the next few days. After all, we dont want anyone else questioning the American Dream(c) now do we?
Good people go to bed earlier.
What a BS. Do you know how easy it is to prevent a "cyber attack" on the light infrastructure? JUST DON"T PLUG THE LIGHTS TO THE INTERNET. You know, either create a local LAN or use a VPN. It's called a "virtual private network" and you can not hack it from the internet. To get the idea please look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Virtual_Private_Network_overview.svg
See the grey cloud? That's the Internet and it have no access what-so-ever to the VPN.
The only risk is an insider with access to the local LAN or VPN. But if you have an insider then he or she can do much more harm then switch off the lights.
http://www.mueller-public.de - My site http://www.anr-institute.com/ - Advanced Natural Research Institute
this FUD stands on the vague memory of lights going out at the US superbowl.
The evil ones, trying to play with our minds.
We are the people we are righteous, wherever you are FUD spreaders of all kinds, we see you. Fear will change side. You will fear us.
be released into Picadilly Circle by terrorist mahouts.
We caught wind of this by collecting phone metadata and prevented it from ever happening.
Prove we didn't.
Put everybody in jail. There will be no more crime. Everybody's happy.
When are the people in charge going to stop using 1984 as a resource manual?
The head of the government's surveillance centre GCHQ, Sir Iain Lobban, says reconnaissance has taken place in cyberspace
Ok, after reading that I'm firmly convinced that this guy doesn't actually own a computer, use the internet and his concept of what networking is entirely based on watching the movie Tron a few too many times. He's probably paying his security experts six figures and at the end of each day they turn in reports full of details about light-cycles and occasionally they "capture" a glow in the dark frisbee at the local wallgreens and claim that they are some hackers identity disc.
It would be FUD anyway since it's pure speculation. +1 for more FUD since there was already a lot of arm-waving about it the first time. Another +1 since there is a possibility of a Snowden factor thrown in to make it look like he's harmed the US somehow.
Don't get distracted by the real issue here. Snowden is not accountable for the laws broken by large government agencies.
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
On Earth-31.
What about the lights going off at the Super Bowl? I always thought that was suspect...
question is whether this is real, or whether this is a FUD story promoted by GCHQ
The revolving door between the gov't and companies like Booz Allen Hamilton, Boeing, Lockheed, Raytheon, etc. give the phrase "pass it forward" a whole new meaning. Gov't officials tell us we need to spend billions on contractors to protect us from the boogeyman and conveniently end up working as contractors themselves after they retire.
We were told that budget cuts to defense due to the sequester would be disastrous yet here we are doing just fine, so don't believe the FUD. In the past the taxpayer was robbed by being protected from the boogeyman by spending on unnecessary military equipment - unfortunately today the taxpayer is robbed by spending on unnecessary spying on taxpayers themselves. We're getting it up the ass twice now.
The possibilities are limitless!
Yes we DEMAND echelon, prism, anal retention, whatever.
...it still is an "ends justifies the means" argument. Did anyone ever tell you this was an OK to use this type of argument to get your way? Seems like I was always told that this is not a justifiable position to take.
Iceweasel can't find the server at goddamnmotherfuckingtittysuckingsonofabitch.co.uk.
Proof ? Any credible material, anywhere ?
No proof, but it wouldn't have been the first time in history. The opening night of Eurodisney Paris was marred by a terrorist attack against one of the power lines to the parc. Fortunately, this bomblet didn't have any impact on the opening ceremony, thanks to a redundant power supply.
acctually putting/forcing so many people into such a close confinment is dangerous to begin with. maybe next time they can film the whole spectacle and stream it to the internetzzzzz^hehe^hehe.
Who cares if the power goes out during the Olympics.
Just imagine how humiliating it would be if the power were to go out at an important event, like the Super Bowl!
NM, its happened already.
While I would not rule out incredible stupidity by the system designers, this is very likely just another piece of FUD created by the amoral scum that presumes to "protect" us nowadays.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
If they were smart, they would have gathered up all of the crayons in the country before the opening ceremonies.
...then I comment the linked article to the House.
Of course, since the propoganda is tailored on a country-by-country basis, you may need to route around some stuff just in order to listen - and be appalled - by this.
"the interesting question is whether this is real"
NO!
"or whether this is a FUD story promoted by GCHQ to help shore up some credibility issues"
YES!
AccountKiller
facebook sees itself in a mirror, and goes into infinite loop. all those affected turn to twitter, which promptly fowls itself. WaPo, while listening to Alanis Morissette, realizes that the internet itself is under attack...and that's when NSA claims credit (IRL) for edge detection.
In NSA America social networks join you!
Pics or it didn't happen.
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When you can't even get an olympic countdown clock to run past the first 24hrs.....what faith in "Cyber Security" is left....
When the power cut out for half of the stadium during Super Bowl XlVII, that was not a grid failure or shitty wiring. That was Terrorists!!!
/tinfoil moonbattery
Why did they have to go and mention the Olympics!? I had just about managed to subdue the vile memories of Group4 security blunders, air defence missiles mounted on residential apartment blocks, the insane noise levels of fighter jets overhead, and people being arrested for not looking happy enough.
we just couldn't see it because there was no power