Slashdot Mirror
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...
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!
http://edition.cnn.com/2013/02/08/us/superdome-power-outage anyone? Did civilization end?
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.
The Olympics is a business markedly worse than most, in terms of nakedly abusive regulatory capture and overt plunder of the public who are unlucky enough to reside in its chosen location.
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.
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.
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.
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!
It's called a "virtual private network" and you can not hack it from the internet.
That kind of thinking is exactly why we get massive security holes. Of course its possible to crack a VPN - you just crack one of the endpoint routers.
http://blog.nexusuk.org