Linked by Thom Holwerda on Wed 17th Oct 2012 23:48 UTC, submitted by poundsmack
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Member since:
2006-10-08
If you want to be scared to death, visit your local hospital:
http://www.technologyreview.com/news/429616/computer-viruses-are-ra...
Medical devices are a domain for closed-source software. That software may be essential to life of people. So if you are a "cyber-terrorist" and want to hurt "ordinary people", you could take down hospital devices. Everything you need is in there: proprietary devices, often sloppily engineered (from the software aspect), insecure and exploitable; IT infrastructures happily carrying out your orders (PCs, printers, networking gear); people - some stupid, some ignorant, some knowing, but with a voice to "unimportant" to make any change to the status quo, and those in charge of "decision & responsibility", relying on outsourcing, cheap renting, and delegating the own security to 3rd parties who have no other interest than eating from the cake of money, by not really delivering good services. It's not even hard: Bring a prepared USB stick, put it in some unsecured PC, or deal with the WLAN. There's enough old and old-fasioned hardware and software still in use, considered "not that bad", so nothing is questioned, because it "just works". There can't be security without knowledge, and knowledge is usually "left to others" who, in the end, don't really care. And it's not just about the danger of "cyber-terrorism"; just think what you could earn by obtaining patients' and employees' data (personal data, payment details, medical records, pricing, contracts with 3rd party services, data from research studies etc.) and selling them to spammers, advertisers or competitors.
Why can I make those claims? Because I've seen it. Here in Germany. Too often.