For the last time, obscurity is not security! The enemy military can probably crack an instruction set real fast.
Yes, and I'm sure the top brass knows this. Plus, given any wartime scenario, one of these will fall into enemy hands. So the main point is not so much "Can they reverse engineer this?" as much as "If they get one of these still working, are they going to use it to gain lots of intelligence?" I would imagine that they will have the encryption setup similiar to what they already have... tamper with it, and the keys are erased, possibly to include whatever hardware is controlling the encryption. This way, they could keep the system reasonably secure.
Actually, near the beginning of the year, the US Govt disabled the part of the GPS system that did not allow for pinpoint accruacy.
They had originally placed into all GPS systems (non-military, anyways) a system that threw off the reading by X number of yards/meters.
They will, in all likeliness, have to do a re-vote for Florida. There are simply too many variables floating around in the mix... the punch cards could definitely have been misinterpreted, especially by someone who's vision hasn't been 20/20 for a while. Then there was the story of a few of the ballot boxes going missing for a few hours, then turning back up. And of course, to boot, Dubya's brother is the governor of the state! If both the Bush brothers don't want to commit political suicide on this, they'll have to go for the recount. Either that, or have the Democrats breathing down their necks, getting ready to accuse both of them of election fraud, and wanting to hang them both from the highest tree in the land...
Fl*rida hasn't voted democratic in 30 years. How can there be any doubt?
Well, because the senior population (Which is the big deal down there, BTW) has been shifting... the older people who used to be staunchly Republican, are starting to be replaced by aging Democrats, splitting them to a point approaching even. After all, if Florida wasn't in serious question, would we be still waiting for this election to be over?
No, the one I still want to see is Nader or one of the other third-party guys come in and take up just enough electoral votes to tie Gore and Bush... If only to see what'll happen... I personally would like to see pistols at 20 paces on the White House lawn... if you live, then Bill, show them what they've won!
Well, the only problem with moving up to a newer way to vote is that the gentrified legislature is honestly scared of technology. There is still a good chunk of congressmen and senators that were in WWII and Korea... they grew up using slide rules, and do not trust the new technologies... with good reason, to an extent.
For example: they decide to allow voting over the web... some script kiddie figures out a back door into the system, and rigs the system up to allow him a million votes. All of the sudden, he's just given a state to whomever he chose.
Let's face it, in a system of that size (by necessity, if even 10% of the country used it) there will be a hole in there somewhere. And when enough people are looking for it (You can bet all the campaigns would have a team all over it), it will be found.
Is it really a suprise that a network made completely of NT/2000 was hacked?
Well, mod me down to -1 for saying it, but yes. MSFT are the people who made the whole thing! They really should be the ones to know how it all works. Plus, correct me if I'm wrong, but not too many people actually crack into MSFT's servers. It's a task that I'm sure many of the 31337 script kiddies are green with envy over.
The best solution for keeping a laptop secure is, of course, to simply place said laptop into a secure room or vault. In this case, being a CIO, I would think that he/she would have some type of encryption program on his/her machine. All the other ideas that have been posted thus far (programs to log their IP, LoJack-style systems, etc.) would also work.
On a higher level, though... keeping an entire network secure would become much more difficult. One answer would be to have a completely seperate network set up to handle confidential information only. This would work exceptionally well in a smaller area network (i.e. one that in all in one area, no dial ups, everything in walking distance). But let's face it, no matter how well the system is designed, the minute it hits TCP/IP, it's vunerable. The only solution at that point would be keep all the small, secure networks seperate and transfer the data via courier, perhaps.
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For the last time, obscurity is not security! The enemy military can probably crack an instruction set real fast. Yes, and I'm sure the top brass knows this. Plus, given any wartime scenario, one of these will fall into enemy hands. So the main point is not so much "Can they reverse engineer this?" as much as "If they get one of these still working, are they going to use it to gain lots of intelligence?" I would imagine that they will have the encryption setup similiar to what they already have... tamper with it, and the keys are erased, possibly to include whatever hardware is controlling the encryption. This way, they could keep the system reasonably secure.
Actually, near the beginning of the year, the US Govt disabled the part of the GPS system that did not allow for pinpoint accruacy. They had originally placed into all GPS systems (non-military, anyways) a system that threw off the reading by X number of yards/meters.
They will, in all likeliness, have to do a re-vote for Florida. There are simply too many variables floating around in the mix... the punch cards could definitely have been misinterpreted, especially by someone who's vision hasn't been 20/20 for a while. Then there was the story of a few of the ballot boxes going missing for a few hours, then turning back up. And of course, to boot, Dubya's brother is the governor of the state! If both the Bush brothers don't want to commit political suicide on this, they'll have to go for the recount. Either that, or have the Democrats breathing down their necks, getting ready to accuse both of them of election fraud, and wanting to hang them both from the highest tree in the land...
Fl*rida hasn't voted democratic in 30 years. How can there be any doubt? Well, because the senior population (Which is the big deal down there, BTW) has been shifting... the older people who used to be staunchly Republican, are starting to be replaced by aging Democrats, splitting them to a point approaching even. After all, if Florida wasn't in serious question, would we be still waiting for this election to be over?
No, the one I still want to see is Nader or one of the other third-party guys come in and take up just enough electoral votes to tie Gore and Bush... If only to see what'll happen... I personally would like to see pistols at 20 paces on the White House lawn... if you live, then Bill, show them what they've won!
Well, the only problem with moving up to a newer way to vote is that the gentrified legislature is honestly scared of technology. There is still a good chunk of congressmen and senators that were in WWII and Korea... they grew up using slide rules, and do not trust the new technologies... with good reason, to an extent. For example: they decide to allow voting over the web... some script kiddie figures out a back door into the system, and rigs the system up to allow him a million votes. All of the sudden, he's just given a state to whomever he chose. Let's face it, in a system of that size (by necessity, if even 10% of the country used it) there will be a hole in there somewhere. And when enough people are looking for it (You can bet all the campaigns would have a team all over it), it will be found.
Come on, the quadrillionth binary digit of pi turns out to be a zero? I'd be much more impressed if it turned out to be, say, three.
Is it really a suprise that a network made completely of NT/2000 was hacked? Well, mod me down to -1 for saying it, but yes. MSFT are the people who made the whole thing! They really should be the ones to know how it all works. Plus, correct me if I'm wrong, but not too many people actually crack into MSFT's servers. It's a task that I'm sure many of the 31337 script kiddies are green with envy over.
The best solution for keeping a laptop secure is, of course, to simply place said laptop into a secure room or vault. In this case, being a CIO, I would think that he/she would have some type of encryption program on his/her machine. All the other ideas that have been posted thus far (programs to log their IP, LoJack-style systems, etc.) would also work. On a higher level, though... keeping an entire network secure would become much more difficult. One answer would be to have a completely seperate network set up to handle confidential information only. This would work exceptionally well in a smaller area network (i.e. one that in all in one area, no dial ups, everything in walking distance). But let's face it, no matter how well the system is designed, the minute it hits TCP/IP, it's vunerable. The only solution at that point would be keep all the small, secure networks seperate and transfer the data via courier, perhaps.