British MPs Warn of 'Fatal' Cyber Warfare Strategy 43
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."
As usual... (Score:3, Funny)
Where the US leads, the UK follows...
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it's amazing how much of an example we (the US) set in showing other countries how to fail exactly like we do. You'd think more of them would know to do the opposite.
You'd think we'd learn from failure too (Score:1)
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 exam
No, government taking over businesses does (Score:2)
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 ear
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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.
You have got to be fucking kidding. You don't know what the words "communism" or "capitalism" mean, although you've certainly proved that you know what "fail" does.
England banned guns and violent crime DOUBLED.
England has always had fairly tight gun controls (since the First World war, anyway) and very few people ever legally carried weapons anyway. The people who use guns in crimes now would have done so fifty years ago (i.e. they're career criminals like armed robbers or large scale drug dealers/gangsters). By definition, you can't stop criminals ge
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Doubled? Got figures to back that up?
I have figures that say murders halved in the last decade.
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I will add that US figure has also halved, but has taken 20 years to do so (and is still 3x more prevalent per capita)
Also "attribution" does not help when (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Also "attribution" does not help when (Score:4, Interesting)
I'd have thought corporate espionage was more the main enemy in any sort of "cyber warfare" rather than terrorism.
Though I'm sure the Chinese have already stolen everything they need from our primitive network.
Re:Also "attribution" does not help when (Score:4, Insightful)
The largest threat of terrorism to the UK does not come from Islamic extremism: the largest threat remains continuing branches of the IRA. Those damn radicalized Christians!
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The largest threat of terrorism to the UK does not come from Islamic extremism: the largest threat remains continuing branches of the IRA. Those damn radicalized Christians!
Not according to MI5 [mi5.gov.uk] who say
International terrorism from groups such as Al Qaida presents a threat on a scale not previously encountered. Drawing on extremist messages presented by figures such as Usama bin Laden, Al Qaida and its related networks seek to carry out terrorist attacks around the world, aiming to carry out "high impact" attacks causing mass civilian casualties.
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On the UK mainland alone, over the past 40 years there have been a couple of hundred attacks by Irish republicans - and that doesn't count attacks by loyalists, which tend not to be on the mainland.
How many attacks by radical Muslims? One, and the people who did it are all dead - the upside of suicide bombings is that people tend to only carry out one.
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Well, kind of, but we're not spying on American republicans, are we? Hmm, maybe...
Re:Also "attribution" does not help when (Score:4, Insightful)
But that's the character of the Internet. Its not a classical war with front lines, like the last big one. Its more like an insurgency or just plain old criminal activity conducted by the punks on the street corner.
Attribution is fine if your plan is to counter attack some state entity. But it does no good against a criminal organization, terrorist cell or spammer that can dissolve and reorganize at any time.
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Attribution does not help, period. Most attacks happen from hacked bots anyway.
Apparently, someone just told them about proxies (Score:3)
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.
Re:Apparently, someone just told them about proxie (Score:5, Funny)
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?
Not to mention horribly behind in networking. (Score:2, Interesting)
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.
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Re:Not to mention horribly behind in networking. (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes but if the over-the-Internet Consultation is suppose to be free or a minimal charge; you will not find a lot of Doctors doing it. The good thing I guess, is that it would be easy to weed out the Doctors who are in it for the money, verses the Doctors that actually care about their Patients. From my personal experience, a real caring Doctor is a rarity in the USA.
The healthcare system is very different in the US to in the UK. In particular, patients don't (usually) pay doctors to get treated in the UK so there's no incentive for the medics to incompletely treat someone, and there's a part of the system that is genuinely motivated to reduce overall costs and which will therefore invest in preventative medicine. (I won't argue that it's a perfect system though, just less broken in terms of overall cost-effectiveness.)
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Yes but if the over-the-Internet Consultation is suppose to be free or a minimal charge; you will not find a lot of Doctors doing it. The good thing I guess, is that it would be easy to weed out the Doctors who are in it for the money, verses the Doctors that actually care about their Patients. From my personal experience, a real caring Doctor is a rarity in the USA.
All consultations are free in the UK (at the point of use, yes I know we pay for the NHS through taxes).
Fucking socialism, eh?
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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. If the doctors weren't in because of illness, do you really think they should be working from home when they're below par? Aren't doctors allowed holidays and sick time like everyone else?
Standard response (Score:4, Interesting)
$650 million in pork oink oink (Score:1)
"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!
Gover
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The money certainly isn't being used to employ competent personnel. The recent codebreaker PR stunt intended to recruit new 'spooks' was for a job that paid £25k.
Anyone that had the skills required to pass the challenge would be able to get twice that in the private sector.
In other word.. (Score:3)
their internet condom has holes. abstinence is the best policy when it comes to the internet and dangerious technology..
Time to ... (Score:2)
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We shall defend our network, whatever the cost may be, we shall code on the routers, we shall code on the windows landing grounds, we shall code in the coffee houses and in the streets, we shall code in the wifi hills; we shall never surrender.
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From the Halls of mount Zune A: ....
To the Shores of IEEE
Not suggesting they're behind the times... (Score:1)
"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?"