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Ars Technica reports that the US government built facilities for the Minuteman missiles in the 1960s and 1970s and although the missiles have been upgraded numerous times to make them safer and more reliable, the bases themselves haven't changed much and there isn't a lot of incentive to upgrade them. ICBM forces commander Maj. Gen. Jack Weinstein told Leslie Stahl from "60 Minutes" that the bases have extremely tight IT and cyber security, because they're not Internet-connected and they use such old hardware and software. "A few years ago we did a complete analysis of our entire network," says Weinstein. "Cyber engineers found out that the system is extremely safe and extremely secure in the way it's developed." While on the base, missileers showed Stahl the 8-inch floppy disks, marked "Top Secret," which are used with the computer that handles what was once called the Strategic Air Command Digital Network (SACDIN), a communication system that delivers launch commands to US missile forces. Later, in an interview with Weinstein, Stahl described the disk she was shown as "gigantic," and said she had never seen one that big. Weinstein explained, "Those older systems provide us some, I will say, huge safety, when it comes to some cyber issues that we currently have in the world."
(Score: 4, Informative) by WizardFusion on Tuesday April 29 2014, @02:40PM
(for those that don't know)
Because each of the ships systems were separate. No connection with each other.
In one episode of the modern version, they did network them together (for some reason) and the Cylons try to hack them.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 29 2014, @03:04PM
The ships also had two computer networks. One for I guess "normal" networking and the other for command and control. The C&C network was isolated and had no communications outside the ship. There episode where they almost got hacked was when they connected the two networks to be able to receive data from another ship.
Most places with SCADA systems could learn a lot from that show about security.
(Score: 1) by mrMagoo on Tuesday April 29 2014, @03:19PM
They also had a lot of analog stuff.
The producers must have had to dredge a tech landfill to get the clunky phones they used.
"Good judgment comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgment." -Originally attributed to Nasrudin
(Score: 2) by mendax on Tuesday April 29 2014, @07:07PM
As I recall from the commentary on the DVD's, the phones came off a submarine. But they didn't built a lot of props for that show to get the realism of the ship being old.
It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Tuesday April 29 2014, @05:54PM
As I recall, in the newer show,
BG was due either for a refit or to be scrapped because its systems were so outdated. Because of this they were spared the hacking that happened to the other ships in the fleet.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.