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Recently launched and not yet operational, the HMS Queen Elizabeth's computers are running Windows XP.
The ship's officers defend this, claiming that the ship is secure, but the phrasing of their comments suggests that they really don't have a clue:
"It's not the system itself, of course, that's vulnerable, it's the security that surrounds it.
So the security is vulnerable?
"I want to reassure you about Queen Elizabeth, the security around its computer system is properly protected and we don't have any vulnerability on that particular score."
Apparently, where you buy your computers makes Windows XP more secure:
"The ship is well designed and there has been a very, very stringent procurement train that has ensured we are less susceptible to cyber than most."
He added: "We are a very sanitised procurement train. I would say, compared to the NHS buying computers off the shelf, we are probably better than that. If you think more Nasa and less NHS you are probably in the right place."
Didn't they learn from recent events how even air-gapped computers can be compromised?
Also covered at The Register, The Times, and The Guardian.
(Score: 2) by Mykl on Thursday June 29 2017, @12:11AM (3 children)
When the Cylons attacked, the Galactica was one of the few ships that survived because it used outdated software. All of the new ships in the fleet were taken over and neutralized in seconds.
It's essential that we keep systems like WinXP around, as any self-respecting Cylon wouldn't be caught dead using that. It's our only defence against the upcoming AI war. I assume that this would also hold true for the other players - Skynet, the Lawnmower Man, the Matrix and that AI from Ghost in the Shell (the anime, not that crap movie).
Geez, it's going to be a shitstorm soon - perhaps I need to break out my old Commodore 64 again...
(Score: 1) by anubi on Thursday June 29 2017, @06:19AM (2 children)
Can you imagine the frustration of hacking a Commodore64?
You spend all this time trying to get your code in the machine... you execute it and the ship begins to malfunction.
The captain sees it, realizes he no longer has control, goes to the C64, turns it off, unplugs the remote, and turns it back on.
In less than a minute, he's back at the helm, and you no longer get any response whatsoever from your link. The other end is laying on the floor somewhere where the captain dropped it.
Remember those old game cartridges for the C64, which were usually a pair of 27C64's? I often bought game cartridges just for the case, then put my own custom code in them for machine control. Unfortunately, the original C64 was unfit for industrial usage due to overheating VIC chips. But good ol' Don Lancaster figured out how to make video streams using yet another 65C02, which he described in his "TV Typewriter Cookbook", which I found extremely useful.
I was able to fork off a derivative design which used two 65C02. One for processing, the other for keyboard scanning and video generation. Monochrome. Ran quite happily on flashlight batteries.
( Don Lancaster was one of my idols... along with Steve Ciarcia, Robert Pease and Jim Williams. I really looked up to those fellas. High priests of the trade in my book. )
At the time, Rockwell was making 65C02 chips and had an impressive architecture similar to the C64 known as the AIM series. I was in love with that design. There was so much I wanted to do with this thing. After the woes of discrete, RTL, DTL, then TTL, CMOS was a dream come true. I felt 74/54CXXX and 4XXX CMOS was the ultimate in logic. Bye-bye kilowatt power supplies so heavy I could not lift 'em. Hello systems I could run on flashlight cells.
Times change. I can now buy the functional equivalent of an entire AIM system on one ATMEL 328P.
Which lets me keep my minimalist designs with now ever simpler hardware.
Sure, go ahead and make the presentation layer as fluffy as you want, as long as its built on a sturdy frame. If something comes along and eats up all the fluff, I want the foundation staying put and running no matter what.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 29 2017, @07:40AM (1 child)
...who crashed his trusty old VW bug on the way home from Jim Williams' funeral and died.
Whoa. Too much like Russian nesting dolls.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1) by anubi on Thursday June 29 2017, @08:29AM
Yeh, he loved his old VW bug.... he was always writing about it in "Pease Porridge" column.
I considered those two people to be probably the most knowledgeable folks in the analog world. I sure miss reading the stories they posted in the technical magazines.
I was quite envious of them being able to find employers that tolerated their quirks and let them do what they did best: innovate and build wonderful new things.
Every attempt I made to be creative only seemed to aggravate the suit guys, who seemed to relentlessly push me for the most expedient solution, no matter how inelegant and half-baked.
Both of these men were peas of the same pod... quite colorful and individualistic.... traits hardly tolerated in the rigid military-industrial complex environment I was in at the time. I wanted so bad a job I would actually enjoy instead of feeling like the monkey with the cup as the organ grinder woo'd the three letter agencies.
It was a sad day indeed to lose them.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]