Government Computers and IT Security
It amazes he how lax governments can be about IT security. Here’s an article, which talks about the Conficker Worm - a worm that would have been harmless if people actually updated their system regularly. I get why desktop users can be lazy about that (I’ve not always been perfect about that either, but I’m better nowadays). Sometimes users even have valid reasons for not updating (like Windows patches breaking software they rely on). But if you’re a government institution, private company or any other large or small organization then you really shouldn’t be lax about these things. Check this out:
The security hole exploited by Conficker and its variants was already patched before the worm got out, which means that if you were a good boy or girl, and kept your machines up-to-date, you had nothing to fear. However, thanks to the laxness of other people, we are now facing a pretty huge botnet that could be used for anything from sending spam to performing DOS attacks.
Apparently, among those lax people are several government agencies. The UK Ministry of Defence has been infected, including a number of Royal Navy warships, but also the UK’s parliament, a Sheffield hospital, the judicial systems in the city of Houston, and the Bundeswehr (that’s the German army).
