News Stories

[Ithekro]

I'll take Rie Takana...she's only a year or so younger than I am.

[andyjay729]

6.0 quake off the Oregon coast...

[Xellos-_^]

Originally Posted by Ithekro

I'll take Rie Takana...she's only a year or so younger than I am.

*knocks out Ithekro with a bag of potato

she is mine.

i will also take Kawasumi Ayako and Chiwa Saito as well.

[Ithekro]

Never!
(There is also Chihara Minori, but I don't know if we'd mesh at all)
---------------

Senators launch new push for cybersecurity bill
Measure is aimed at safeguarding the nation's vulnerable water and power systems


http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/46384534...security-bill/

Hmmmmuh...Suurrre.

[Ledgem]

Originally Posted by Ithekro

Senators launch new push for cybersecurity bill
Measure is aimed at safeguarding the nation's vulnerable water and power systems


http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/46384534...security-bill/

Hmmmmuh...Suurrre.

Yeah, this is pretty dumb. I have a better idea: how about not connecting those things to the internet at all?

[Vexx]

Originally Posted by Ledgem

Yeah, this is pretty dumb. I have a better idea: how about not connecting those things to the internet at all?

Who the hell thought connecting ANY of this to the internet was a good idea? Firing is too good for them.... hung from the edge of Hoover Dam maybe. Every engineer I know is aghast at the notion of hooking SCADA systems to a public network.

[Ithekro]

If the teen hackers could find a way in during the late 1980s and early 1990s, they will find a way in, period.

[Vexx]

Control systems and SCADA systems were never designed with security in mind because -- they were always assumed to be on a closed network completely unconnected to any insecure points (perimeter defense). Hacking one would require breaking a physical perimeter defense (walls, guards, etc). If they're connected to the Internet now, I'll have to call "pointy headed boss"stupidity got us there.

I have read a few articles in control system journals about *creating* secure SCADA systems so they *could* be connected to public networks, though....

[SaintessHeart]

Originally Posted by Xellos-_^

aren't these guys Sunni and the Iranian's are Shiite?

Most of the militant groups didn't care who funded them - Sunni or Shiite. Money is money, as long as it can buy fertiliser and petrol it is good enough for them.

Originally Posted by Ithekro

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/46384534...security-bill/

Hmmmmuh...Suurrre.

Originally Posted by Vexx

Control systems and SCADA systems were never designed with security in mind because -- they were always assumed to be on a closed network completely unconnected to any insecure points (perimeter defense). Hacking one would require breaking a physical perimeter defense (walls, guards, etc). If they're connected to the Internet now, I'll have to call "pointy headed boss"stupidity got us there.

I have read a few articles in control system journals about *creating* secure SCADA systems so they *could* be connected to public networks, though....

The only kind of supervisory control system I have heard or that are connected through a network are military mobilisation control systems (the red button), even which are connected through a pretty analog system that would require more mechanical engineering knowledge than computer knowledge.

I have heard about a few local proposals which certain politicians and "brainstorm teams" decide to do the same thing to certain sensitive infrastructure - most engineering heads in charge of maintenance replied with a "wire the whole shit yourself. You can't? Now fuck off." But given how security is being run with "budget cuts" and "cost-control measures", I'd say just "go ahead".

[0utf0xZer0]

Originally Posted by andyjay729

Sheesh, how did you guys end up with those righties? Usually it's the exact opposite vis a vis America. (Of course, Connecticut Democrat Chris Dodd was earlier comparing SOPA opponents to "spoiled children".)

Canada is indeed more "left leaning" than the US. This is especially noticeable during much of the Bush Jr. years, where Canada was ruled by a Liberal majority government from 2000-2004 and a Liberal-NDP informal coalition from 2004-2006. I don't think a lot has changed socially since 2006 but a number of political factors have shifted power in favour of more right-wing sections of Canadian society.

A brief (edit: or not) history lesson since it makes more sense if you start a few years back:

From maybe 1960-93, you basically had, on a right to left spectrum, Progressive Conservatives, Liberals, and New Democratic Party. Either the PCs or Liberals would govern, the NDP would influence by threatening to siphon off left wing voters from the Liberals.

1993:
-The PCs basically imploded due to various issues (scandals, etc.) and get absolutely steamrollered by the Liberals - think going from 150 seats to 2 kind of deal.
-In Quebec, the Bloc Quebecois becomes prominent as the party of choice for Quebec separatists.
-In western Canada, which traditionally hates the Liberals for favouring central and eastern Canada and meddling with Alberta's oil industry , far right wingers form the Reform Party of Canada (later Canadian Alliance), which is wildly popular in rural parts of western Canada.

2003: realizing they can't win if they keep splitting the right wing vote, the Progressive Conservatives and Canadian Alliance merge into the Conservative Party of Canada. Which doesn't poll well because many Progressive Conservatives aren't comfortable with the new leadership and become Liberals.

late-2003: Auditor General releases report noting perhaps as much as 20% of the contracts under a $500 million advertising campaign against Quebec separatism that ran through much of the late 90s (Quebec voted to stay part of Canada in a 1995 referendum with a sub-1% margin) was paid to ad firms that did little or no work. Most of these firms are Liberal donors. While most evidence suggests that this was carried out by a small group of people who had been pushed out of power by a rival faction within the party before the news broke, this threw the brakes on what had been to that point a nigh-invincible political juggernaut (48% of vote in four party system...).

2004-2006:
-Prime Minister Paul Martin calls a slightly early election citing need for vote of confidence, wins a minority government and forms a informal coalition with the NDP that lasts until 2006, when the disagreements between the two parties become too great.
-One of the biggest shifts occurs in Quebec, where the Bloc QUebecois casts itself as the choice of even non-separatist Quebecors (Quebec is a francophone province and tends more towards a European social-democratic model than the rest of Canada) and gets many former Liberal votes.

2006: Conservative Party wins minority government (Not quite sure what caused the shift here, since I would have said 2004 was the low point for the Liberals, but I suspect people simply didn't see much point in supporting another Liberal-NDP coalition in light of the first failing in 18 months. Paul Martin resigns.

2008: Opposition votes non-confidence in Harper's government, causing an election. By this time, the recession has kicked in. Canada is doing much better than the rest of the G8 (primarily due to decisions made years earlier IMO) but nobody really wants to rock the boat. New Liberal Leader Stephane Dion's carbon tax scheme - never an easy sell - really doesn't sell well due to the economy. Dion's weak English (he's French-Canadian) doesn't help since he makes some embarassing gaffes.

2011: Another election occurs. The Conservatives focus efforts on key swing ridings, some of which they gain in (I've heard heavy targeting of socially conservative ethnic populations may have been a factor but I'm hesitant to make too much of that). New Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff fails to resonate with Canadians and alienates some of the more left leaning Liberals, who jump ship to the NDP.
-In addition, charismatic NDP leader Jack Layton - long the leader people actually liked but found a bit too wild to actually vote for - finally has his breakthrough, especially in Quebec where Bloc Quebecois supporters jump ship to the NDP in droves (Layton accomplishes this while fighting a losing battle with cancer, which claims him less than three months after the election). However, the combination of slightly higher conservative votes and Liberal defections to the NDP causing a left wing vote split allows the Conservatives to gain many seats and get the majority government they have today. The NDP forms official opposition.

Conservative Party support last election was a bit under 40% - actually pretty similar to what Chretien's Liberals managed in the late 90s. Difference being, of course, that the Liberals are roughly center on the Canadian political specturm and the Conservatives are far right, and hence the Liberals would be more representative of the country's politics and probably had higher actual "approval".

The big issue, IMO, aside from the economy favouring the incumbent and the inability of the Liberals to field a leader who can inspire people or shake the bad image from the scandal, is vote splitting on the left. That 40% is a pretty good rough indicator of the "center to right" vote in Canada, the rest being "center to left" - but the "center to left" vote is split between multiple parties (Liberal and NDP, plus a bit of Green Party or Bloc Quebecois in certain parts of the country).

[aohige]

You know what? My toaster and fridge has never been a victim of network security breach.
I wonder why.

/sarcasm

[ganbaru]

Iran to load own nuclear fuel rods in Tehran reactor
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/...81E0EZ20120215

Iran will load domestically made nuclear fuel rods into its Tehran Research Reactor on Wednesday for the first time to keep it running, a senior official told a national news agency.

That's probably the big new than they promissed...

[SaintessHeart]

Originally Posted by ganbaru

Iran to load own nuclear fuel rods in Tehran reactor
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/...81E0EZ20120215

That's probably the big new than they promissed...

And using what is left of it to make a plutonium bomb.

And woo, boy, my country is on the headlines again :

Special Report: Iran's cat-and-mouse game on sanctions

Spoiler:

(Reuters) - Just before noon on a sticky, overcast Saturday morning earlier this month a truck carrying two white containers waited at an electronic checkpoint to leave Singapore's main port. The containers bore the bright red letters IRISL, the initials of Iran's cargo line, which has been blacklisted by the United Nations, United States and European Union.

Anchored just off Singapore's playground island of Sentosa that same day, the container ship Valili was also stacked high with IRISL boxes. A couple of miles to the east the Parmis, another container ship, also carried IRISL crates. Shipping movements data tracked by Reuters shows the Parmis had pulled into Singapore waters from the northern Chinese port of Tianjin early that morning.

The ships and containers are key parts in an international cat-and-mouse game, as Iran attempts to evade the trade sanctions tightening around it. Washington and European capitals want to stop or slow Iran's nuclear program. They believe Iran Shipping Lines(IRISL), which moves nearly a third of Iran's exports and imports and is central to the country's trade, plays a critical role in evading sanctions designed to stop the movement of controlled weapons, missiles and nuclear technology to and from Iran.

IRISL would not comment for this story. Last June the company said in an interview that there was no evidence it had been involved in arms trafficking. Iran says its nuclear program is peaceful and that IRISL has no links with any weapons program. Tehran complained vigorously last June when the European Union followed the United States with beefed-up sanctions that banned new contracts with IRISL. A United Nations resolution forces all states to inspect IRISL's cargo.

But many in the West hold up IRISL as exhibit A for Iran's ability to evade sanctions because the shipping line regularly reflags its ships and changes their official owners.

An analysis of shipping data sheds new light on that deception. Using data from IHS Fairplay, a ship tracking group that uses ship registration documents from various sources, and Reuters Freight Fundamentals Database, which compiles location data from every ship's Automatic Identification System, shows that despite the sanctions 130 of the 144 banned ships in IRISL's fleet continue to call at many of the world's major ports hidden behind a web of shell companies and diverse ownership.

Dozens of Iranian ships have used Singapore several hundred times in the past two years, for instance, as a stop-off on their way to other destinations such as China.

The data shows that in the 48 months before U.S. sanctions began in September 2008, IRISL made 345 changes to its fleet including names, the flags ships sailed under, operators, managers and registered owners. In the 40 months since sanctions began there have been at least 878, including 157 name changes, 94 changes of flag, 122 changes of operator, and 127 changes of registered ownership.

Hugh Griffiths, head of Countering Illicit Trafficking-Mechanism Assessment Projects at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, says what's unique about those changes is their pace and scale. Normally a ship's name or flag changes when its owner sells it after a decade or so.

"In the Iranian case, none of these apply because it's not based on the normal commercial reasons you'd expect," he said. "Nothing on this scale has ever been seen before in recent history."

John Dalby, a former oil tanker captain and chief executive of Marine Risk Management, a global consultancy and maritime security company, agrees. "When you add name changes, flag changes, changes of operators and then changes of registered owners - especially if it is, to all intents and purposes, the same owner - it means they are trying to hide. Especially so many in such a relatively short space of time."

NO DISGUISE

The Parmis and Valili operate under the flag not of Iran but of Barbados and Malta, respectively. On paper they are no longer part of IRISL, having both changed owners, operators and flag in the past couple of years. But a unique seven-figure "IMO number" issued to each known ship in the world for its entire lifespan reveals the identity of each ship as a sanctioned vessel ultimately owned by the Iranian cargo line. The brightly painted IRISL containers sitting on the ships' decks add to the impression that the ships are still Iranian.

"They certainly don't work too hard to disguise themselves here," said the owner of a tanker management company in Singapore.

The Iranian government has a knack for survival. Sanctions may be hurting ordinary Iranians - grain ships to the Islamic republic have been diverted as Tehran struggled to find credit to finance its food supplies - but Tehran often figures out a way around such blockages.

As far back as late 2010, according to a report from a Middle Eastern intelligence agency, which was confirmed by European diplomats with access to their own intelligence, an Iranian committee boasted that the West had only discovered half of the shell companies and front individuals it used to hide its trading empire; the sanctions were seen as "harmless in Asian countries."

A WEB OF OWNERS

When the Singapore checkpoint light turned green earlier this month, the truck driver turned onto an expressway and headed towards the crossing to Malaysia. Just shy of the border he turned into an industrial estate. Within 10 minutes another three trucks with IRISL containers had arrived.

In every port a ship visits, it needs someone on the ground to sort out its paperwork and organize its cargo. In Singapore that used to be done for Iranian vessels by IRISL's regional office, Asia Marine Network, which was placed under financial sanctions by the United States in 2008.

A June 2011 indictment by the Manhattan District Attorney, Cyrus Vance, alleges that IRISL's Singapore head, Alireza Ghezelayagh, and Singaporean businessman Cheong Kheng Guan tried to get round those sanctions, in particular a ban on any U.S. dollar transfers by IRISL.

The two men were among five people and 11 companies in three countries named in the 317-count indictment that charged IRISL and its agents with illegal use of banks in Manhattan. The companies were said to have "deceived Manhattan banks into processing more than $60 million worth of payments using aliases or corporate alter egos to hide their conduct."

The indictment says that one of Cheong's eight shipping agencies in Singapore, Sinose Maritime, entered into a joint venture with Iran's Asia Marine Network. Sinose Maritime then became the exclusive agent for IRISL in the city-state, the indictment says. Cheong and Ghezelayagh also established a new company, Leading Maritime, just eight days after Asia Marine was placed under sanctions.

The Manhattan DA's office, which declined to comment because its investigations are continuing, alleges that bank records it has obtained show that two of the Singapore companies, Sinose and Leading Maritime, channeled a total of around $41.8 million through the American financial system on behalf of IRISL.

The money moved in 120 different wire payments that the DA's office claims went via the New York branches of HSBC, Bank of New York Mellon, Standard Chartered and Deutsche Bank, causing them to inadvertently breach their sanction obligations. None of those banks were said to have any knowledge of the IRISL connection and none have been charged by the DA's office.

After Cheong's indictment last June, he stood down as a director and shareholder from eight of the 10 companies he was listed as holding, according to the Singapore Accounting and Corporate Regulatory Authority registry.

But his companies and employees remained active, and there is evidence to indicate that not all ties to IRISL were severed.

One of Cheong's former companies, Global Maritime Investments, is listed as the manager of a newly built ship called the Adelina. Commissioned by IRISL and completed in 2010, the Adelina, a container ship, obtained a Singapore flag last December. But Thomson Reuters-owned due-diligence database Accelus lists the "Group Beneficial Owner" of Adelina as Iran Shipping Lines. The latest data from ship consultancy Alphaliner also shows the Adelina is still operated by IRISL.

The Adelina last left Singapore on January 18. Reuters tracked the ship as it steamed up the Red Sea, through the Suez Canal and the Aegean Sea. After stopping at Istanbul it sailed to the Russian port of Novorossiysk on the Black Sea where it moored yesterday.

"TOO MUCH POLITICS"

The day before Cheong stepped down last June, Global Maritime got a new director: Danny Yau, also the director of a further six companies owned or directed by Cheong. As well as now running Global Maritime, Yau has set up a new shipping agency, Hardsea Agencies Pte Ltd. Sitting in his new office overlooking Singapore's Tanjog Pagar port, Yau said Hardsea is a simple shipping agency, unattached to IRISL.

"Not directly, we don't deal with them, we're just agents for certain ships to carry cargo, general cargo," he said when asked of his firm's relationship with the Iranian line. "It doesn't break UN rules or sanctions."

Yau declined to elaborate when contacted later about Global Maritime Investments and the Adelina's links to IRISL. "I don't say anything; it's too much politics," he said.

Another of Cheong's employees at Sinose Maritime, Ling Chong Yung, is listed as the director of Adelina's official owner, Pride Shipping Oriental Pte. Reuters visited Ling at the offices of Damilang Maritime, a newly established shipping agency two streets away from Yau's new office.

Office staff said Ling had left for China on a business trip the day before, but all inquiries related to Pride Shipping had to go through Yau at Hardsea Agencies, who they referred to as "the boss".

Cheong, meanwhile, is still at work in the shipping business.

Visited at a drab office block on an industrial estate in the Buona Vista area of Singapore, Cheong declined to speak. He later responded to questions via email. He said none of the companies he is involved in do any work on behalf of IRISL. Sinose Maritime, he said, is in the course of being liquidated.

"In so far as the indictment against me is concerned, it is entirely unjustified. I have instructed solicitors in the U.S. to defend the case vigorously and to defeat the charges which are totally without any foundation," he said.

HIGH COURT SHERIFF

Not everyone agrees with Washington's claims that IRISL is still in charge of ships that visit Singapore. When Singapore's High Court Sheriff seized three IRISL ships in September 2010 for failing to meet their credit arrangements, the court considered whether Singapore should, under UN sanctions, continue to hold the ships even after the payments were made.

The city-state is clear on its attitude to sanctions: it will implement those agreed on by the United Nations, but will not take any unilateral action or subscribe to those issued unilaterally by the United States or European Union.

The UN embargo orders IRISL assets be frozen, including those of "any person or entity acting on their behalf or at their direction, and to entities owned or controlled by them."

But the judge in the 2010 case, Justice Quentin Loh, decided that the UN sanctions target specific IRISL entities such as IRISL Benelux, and not the three companies listed as the owners of the ships. He also ruled that even if UN sanctions did apply, they did not imply that commercial assets such as ships should be seized. Singapore released the vessels.

Loh concluded: "Links to IRISL itself are, by themselves, neither here nor there."

Reuters Freight Fundamentals shows that Singapore has received at least 150 visits by 83 ships believed to be IRISL-linked over the past two years.

A spokesman for the Singapore Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that "Singapore enforces all United Nations Security Council (UNSC) sanctions against Iran. We do not enforce the unilateral sanctions by any jurisdiction which go beyond the UNSC sanctions. In this regard, Singapore understands that IRISL in itself is not a UN-designated entity."

The foreign affairs spokesman said Cheong Kheng Guan "faces proceedings under U.S. law for engaging in business dealings with and having facilitated the activities of U.S.-designated entities. Based on what we know, there has been no violation of UNSC sanctions or Singapore law in this particular case."

U.S. diplomatic sources privately say that they wish Singapore would take a harder line.

SUNNY MALTA, IRANIAN HIDEOUT

And it's not just Singapore. Twenty three sanctioned Iranian ships have visited 12 EU ports since July 2010, when the EU imposed its own first sanctions on IRISL, including 96 stop-offs in Malta, 14 visits to Antwerp and 10 to Rotterdam.

As well, 48 Iran-linked ships sail under the flag of Malta and 12 under that of Cyprus.

In the Mediterranean island of Malta, authorities say trade with Iran has been declining steeply, with exports down to 144,996 euros ($191,000) in 2010 from more than 2 million euros in 2008 and 2009. Joseph Cole, the chairman of the Maltese sanctions monitoring board, said a contract between IRISL and Malta Freeport will not expire until November 2013, but an intensive program of customs inspections had already driven the shipping line away.

"We have made it so difficult for IRISL ships that they have reduced their operation to Malta to almost nil - even though technically they can still come," said Cole.

Movement data for IRISL's fleet, however, show that 18 ships have visited Malta's Freeport over the last two years, three of them as recently as November.

IRISL containers could be seen stacked on the concrete yards of the Freeport last week. Despite being a member of the European Union, Malta not only supplies flagging services to IRISL ships, but is also home to 24 shell companies that help conceal Iran's ownership of vessels.

In the Grand Harbour of Malta, below the sandstone ramparts of the capital Valletta, a grey-painted building houses Transport Malta. The agency earns around 300,000 euros annually from registering IRISL ships, according to an estimate by Reuters based on a table of tariffs on the agency's website. It declined to comment, citing commercial sensitivity.

It is also home to the country's public shipping register where - recorded in longhand in large paper volumes - is the paper trail of Iran's shell games, as well as evidence of those who have worked for the country.

As sanctions have tightened, the Maltese register shows, Iran's ships have regularly switched not just flags, but names, registered owners, registered agents, and the addresses of owners and agents. The Alva, for instance, a 66,500-deadweight tonnes (DWT) container vessel, has had three different owners since it was built in Germany in 2008 and acquired by IRISL that year. It originally flew a German flag. IRISL switched that to a Maltese flag, then back to a German one in 2010, then again to Maltese last year.

READY TO SACRIFICE

Most Maltese lawyers and agents now refuse to act for IRISL. Not only are new commercial contracts with the Iranian line banned under EU sanctions, existing ties have been scrapped by most agents to avoid damage to their reputation, according to two Maltese lawyers. That has pushed most business into the hands of a small Maltese outfit, the Royal-Med Shipping Agency, which has an office on the sea front in the tourist resort of Sliema. The agency is now under direct U.S. sanctions as an alleged cover operation for IRISL.

The Royal-Med agency's steel shutters were drawn shut one day last week. A phone call later to Royal-Med's listed number was answered by an employee who said the agency "was in the process of closing down. We have no activity."

The employee, who declined to give his name, said Royal-Med had previously acted as agents at the Freeport for IRISL and then for HDS Lines, a company named by the U.S. government and the EU as a subsidiary of IRISL. He said HDS had decided to end visits to the island last November, leaving Royal-Med with no business.

Dr Tonio Borg, Malta's foreign minister, says IRISL has such a large Maltese fleet because the country has such a large shipping register. Malta's role as Europe's biggest registry was not the result of lax regulation. "We see it as a flag of confidence, not of convenience," he said.

Asked about Malta's connections to IRISL, he revealed that Malta was prepared to de-register Iran's entire sanctioned fleet. "We're moving in that direction," he said. But Iran should not be allowed simply to relocate its ships to other European countries, he said.

"We believe that all services to IRISL should be prohibited," said Borg. "We are ready to make that sacrifice - provided that all countries also make the sacrifice� Otherwise it would be masochistic."

It is a great way to earn money, and a huge risk at doing so. Either way, we fuck ourselves; Iran has got pretty great ties with Malaysia, we don't trade with Iran, we get import-export issues with Malaysia. We trade with them, we get eyeballed by the people who sold us our Harpoon missiles.

Well, at least we get money from our trade. So why not?

And US isn't helping with this.

Hong Kong angry over influx of mainlanders (2:10)

This doesn't look good. At all.

POWs mark Singapore WWII anniversary (1:18)

Originally Posted by Anonymous

Politicians make war for young men to die in.

[Ithekro]

Well they say it is to get medical grade radioactive substances (20% enrichments needed to produce)...which sort of answers the question about why that woman was stopped in Russia carrying lots of low weight radioactive metals to Iran. The kind of stuff that is only used in medical gear.

[ganbaru]

Proview says any ban of iPad exports hard to impose
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/...81E0BE20120215

A debt-laden Chinese technology firm seeking to ban all shipments of Apple's popular iPad tablet into and out of the country has been told that China's customs authorities are unlikely to intervene in the trademark battle.

[SaintessHeart]

Originally Posted by ganbaru

Proview says any ban of iPad exports hard to impose
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/...81E0BE20120215

If that is the same company that manufacture modems and routers, Apple must not be the only one on their tails; Linksys is probably just as happy to have them out of the electronics market too.

[DonQuigleone]

Originally Posted by SaintessHeart

The only kind of supervisory control system I have heard or that are connected through a network are military mobilisation control systems (the red button), even which are connected through a pretty analog system that would require more mechanical engineering knowledge than computer knowledge.

I have heard about a few local proposals which certain politicians and "brainstorm teams" decide to do the same thing to certain sensitive infrastructure - most engineering heads in charge of maintenance replied with a "wire the whole shit yourself. You can't? Now fuck off." But given how security is being run with "budget cuts" and "cost-control measures", I'd say just "go ahead".

There's actually some pretty good reasons to do this, from an engineering perspective. When it comes to water and power systems you have a highly distributed network, and frequent maintenance is required. In the past, you'd have to send a guy to all these isolated reservoirs and power plants regularly to collect performance and maintenance information. Now, a lot of that can be collected automatically, and transferred by wire, vastly cutting down on maintenance costs, because you don't have to send a guy out there to check this stuff manually. It's particularly important with Wind Power, as you need to collect data from every single turbine in order to detect signs of future failure. It also makes the process of preventing overloads more efficient.

Now you need some way to transfer that data a long distance (to the maintenance engineers in their central office), and while you could build a parallel network, that's pretty expensive, so you use the internet.

Even if you did have a parallel network, it still wouldn't be invulnerable, some one could simply plug into a terminal at some isolated wind turbine in the middle of nowhere. Once you're plugged in a saboteur could mess with all the maintenance data, causing immense damage due to impeded maintenance (IE this would start happening).

The other thing the security bill was addressing (from the article) is financial networks. I hate to think what would happen if the DTCC got hacked and all the stock ownership got scrambled (or just wiped)

[Vexx]

Originally Posted by aohige

You know what? My toaster and fridge has never been a victim of network security breach.
I wonder why.

/sarcasm

Ah, you haven't seen Next Year's Models..... we're doomed

[Ithekro]

Probably still using an old analog toast that only toasts bread. And don't get me started on the fridge....

What is this, 1980?

[Xellos-_^]

Originally Posted by Vexx

Ah, you haven't seen Next Year's Models..... we're doomed

Next Years models... don't they already have refrigerates with LCD screens connected to the internet?