ship transponder & communication with "system control"

[phavoc]

Meh. I'll tend to believe the hackers who present their papers more than the government guys, simply because the government wants to put forth 'all is well' sort of BS and the hackers are looking to prove something. Besides, its generally the hackers who do win and then change from black hats to white hats (and avoid jail and make more money).

All one has to do is read the articles on sites like Infosecurity to realize that security breaches happen all the time. Codes get broken all the time through various means.

But it's a game.. so if you want it to be hack-proof, it is.

/end

 

[phavoc]

A prime example of stupidity:

Aussie gaff: well, the program isn’t called ‘Stay Smart Offline’

09 July 2012
In a security breach that boggles the mind, Australia’s national CERT, the communications ministry, and the post office teamed up to lose personal information on subscribers to the government’s Stay Smart Online e-security alert service.

The saga begins in 2008 when AusCERT, a non-profit organization that operates the country’s national computer emergency response team (CERT), received AUD$1.2 million to run Australia’s e-security alert service for home computer users and small and medium-sized businesses, part of the government’s Stay Smart Online initiative.

However, AusCERT was anything but smart when it mailed a DVD with personal information on 8,000 subscribers to the Department of Broadband Communications and Digital Economy (DBCDE), the agency that awarded the contract. The package, which was sent by post in April of this year, never arrived at DBCDE, the Stay Smart Online team said in a July 6 email to subscribers. The DVD contained subscribers’ usernames, email addresses, memorable phrases, and encrypted passwords.

The DBCDE said that it had “no reason to believe that this information has been found and misused by any third party and we do not believe that there is a privacy risk”, a common refrain of agencies, organizations, and companies that are caught red-faced by a security breach

Australian security blogger Geordie Guy quipped about the breach: “You couldn’t make this up. I actually had to check it was July the 6th and not April the 1st.”

Guy added: “This isn’t likely to be the last data leak this year, it’s unlikely to be the biggest, but it’s above and beyond the most embarrassing for a government department with a long history of poor practice (despite its preaching), and I think I speak for a lot of the online rights community when I say it’ll be a long time before we get another this funny.”

 

[Vyrolakos]

The problem I see is not that it can/can't be hacked but that it's too draconian. What happens when changes to the ship structure, due to battle damage or equipment upgrades, cause some of those "minor structural anomalies" to be radically altered or disappear?

Simple, the unit gets reset at the shipyard when you come in for repairs/work. What's so difficult about that?

Only at the shipyard that originally built it, or any shipyard across the entirety of Imperial space that's capable of repairing it?

Right there is at least one small chink in the system, something that motivated criminals would take a great deal of interest in.