el Quida Cyber War ~~ Better Check It Out!

Former Member

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A50765-2002Jun26.html


Just off the press...!

How will this affect you and your access to services and the internet?

It does occur to me that if they can't keep it 'secret' they won't have much effect upon US all!:eek:

Former Member

Then these computers are obviously not well protected. FFS, my PC has more protection than them and I'm running a freeware firewall.
A decent firewall would wipe out the existence of the computers, so even someone looking for them can't find them.

Or...an even better idea is to DISCONNECT the damn things from the internet. What is the point of having a power station's computers linked to the internet? An Intranet would be a lot more secure and inaccesible from the outside world.

Former Member

Aggreed that a decent firewall would solve a lot of problems. Unfortunatly the poeple the (US & UK) gov rely on to tell them about IT security are themselves selling something. Unsurprisingly micro$oft tell the gov's to use their equipment and the equipment of other companys that support the same business model.

Your free fire wall is almost certainly better than the $$$ one that protects some potentailly very dangerous systems.

What really protects those systems though is the knowledge that if any-one does try and mess with them they'll have federal agents kicking there doors in. What with the current state of 'the war on terror' all noraml procedures and legal process are going out of the window. Do you want to be shot in the shower because you were port scanning an "unknown" box?
(exagerated, i know).

the problem with disconnecting vital systems is it means you cannot remote administor them, so if the power station (example) were to be taken over the gov / owner would have no way to control the thing.

If you wanna talk about free / open source Vs. Propriety software start a thread on slashdot.org (although you wont get much debate)