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LHC Almost Hacked...


ssbfalcon

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Well, it's to be expected... it is afterall the most expensive science experiment in history...

If only there were an intergalactic Science Fair...

Anyway...

I say almost hacked because they didn't reach the control system, but according to the article, this group of Greek hackers were close...

http://it.slashdot.org/it/08/09/12/1657211.shtml

Now, this is obviously a system that everyone and their dead ancestors would want to mess with... So why have key components on the same network that has external access via the internet?

Sure, they have layers of firewalls and passwords... but when has that ever stopped anyone?

So according to the article, the Greek hackers were fairly close to accessing something more critical...

Thoughts? Facepalms? FUD?

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Maybe:

My understanding is they have the LHC linked to universities/research firms/supercomputers all over Europe simply in order to process the massive amount of data that thing generates. I might have read that wrong though. I've had nothing but trouble finding good information between the "BLACK HOLES, WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE!", the idiot reporters doing "human interest" style pieces about it, and the incomprehensible (to me) physics-babble.
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ARGH...

Systems of these kind should NOT be anywhere near the same network as the Internet. The same goes for Power Plant and Industrial systems (all of these systems are collectively referred to as SCADA -- Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition)

This is a common rant among the infosec community about SCADA systems being exposed to the internet that I will forgo making, suffice to say, SCADA systems are *critical* systems and require the maximum security possible, in order to establish this, such systems must not be connected to a commonly accessible network and/or system.

But as for the LHC control systems, from my point of view, there is no real reason why such a system even needs to be internet connected. The main situation here is that there should be relaying the data via a separate network (satellite?) to scientists in other countries (if that's the reason why they want outside connectivity) for sensor data, however, they're being extremely cheap by just using the internet instead.

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