"Many politicians may also lack the scientific knowledge base with which to consider technological issues."

This seems to be an increasing problem, because politicians don't have the knowledge to evaluate the information given to them by their advisers or we see them embarking on technical projects which are not technically achievable. For instance, the S.A. battery scam and the Snowy electricity storage project. (sorry to wander off topic)

David

If you think the current cyber crime is scary, take a look and consider what the Stuxnet computer bug, designed by the NSA and District 800 of the Israeli military has done, will do and is probably the big brother of the current Malware clone, see:

"Operation Olympic Games was a covert and still unacknowledged campaign of sabotage by means of cyber disruption, directed at Iranian nuclear facilities by the United States and likely Israel. As reported, it is one of the first known uses of offensive cyber weapons."

Additionally I highly recommend watching the following Utube video and consider it terrifying implications for us all:

http://youtu.be/Yc7Tk3mwM38

Also consider as we seem to further embrace IT and AI, these are the very things which will increasingly take humans out of the working environment, eventually leading to automation across all sectors of our lives. How do you maintain an economy as we know it without money being earned and people participating in employment. I just don't get it?

Watch the video above and be very scared.

Have a nice day all

Yes, and clearly not assisted by outsourcing services. With foreigners with very different morals given almost unfettered access to sensitive data!?

As for online banking, it might be convenient, save the banks trillions, enable them to shut down the less profitable regional and rural banks?

And given the next boom will be the food boom, nearly as shortsighted and dumb, as deliberately decimating country co-ops, with pernicious policies designed to hollow out rural Australia along with the blue collar set that used to man the butter factories/sugar refineries etc. For diabolically dumb ideological reasons alone.

Those where the days, when we had a floor price under most rural produce and co-ops processing farm products, from acre for acre, vastly more productive family farms, and we were the third wealthiest nation on earth; and a creditor one at that.

But then we still owned a bank, a telco and all our power stations reticulation etc. And old fashioned systems not connected in such a way that a villain tapping away on a keyboard in downtown St Petersburg, couldn't interrupt or cripple with a few keystrokes.

We surely fixed a patently broken economy. We went from the third wealthiest nation on earth, with no debt just debtors, to somewhere south of 30, with record foreign, domestic and government debt, even after the fire sale of much public property and amenity!

Ain't progress and ultra conservative ideology wonderful, given the carefully thought through outcomes and the decimation of the bush/regional and rural Australia; and a growing structural deficit.

A very wise man once said, doing what you've always done while expecting a different outcome is the very definition of insanity. As has been the fire sale of our economic sovereignty!

When the food boom hits these shores, who will be the beneficiaries, us or our foreign masters or myriad cyber crooks?

We can do something about cyber security, just not by outsourcing it to those who may well be the same slum dog millionaires (smiling, affable, well met, villains) threatening it for financial gain?
Alan B.

Just consider how big a potential cashless society will be.

Hackers,scammers, other criminals will have a field day with your data and money it won't take long for the banks to stop repaying victims of fraud as they do now.

Hmmm, I had hoped the author might have been a computer security expert.
I have a question for which I would like an authoritative answer.

Is Linux really as immune as it seems to be to hackers and malware ?
I have been running it for more than ten years, without any protection
except what is built in. I have never had a virus or Trojan or similar.
I have had a Linux bulletin board running 24hr/365 for years non stop while
the internet modem was active and never had a problem.

I do have a scan program which I have run two or three times over
the last three years I have had it. It never found anything.
AVG and the like are not used or indeed available.

I understand a large number of web sites run the Linux server Alpha
I think it is called.
Anyway Linux does seem to be very solid.
For the curious Linux is a derivative of Unix some 30 years ago or so.

Bazz - Is Linux really as immune as it seems to be to hackers and malware ?

The answer is no.

Some of the reasons are.
Linux can be considered the poor mans Microsoft, so if you are going to learn how to break into a house do you teach yourself how to break into the rich mans house or poor mans house.

Like the first Microsoft has so many more users than Linux so which one would you hack?

Most banks and large organizations use Microsoft somewhere around 8% use xp which is very old and easy to hack or find tools to hack it with.

Basically if enough money, confidential data etc is held on linux systems the hackers will go for it, at present it is not worth the time for most crims.

Also Microsoft came equipped with back doors people knew them then told others who told others and on it goes who made YouTube videos how to do it.

While the news and prospects are terrible, it does introduce a glimpse of hope, that perhaps such unsolvable security vulnerabilities will finally bring an end to, or at least slow down, this mad proliferation of digital devices.

---

Dear Bazz,

There actually were malware attacks on Linux some years ago, exploiting a vulnerability, including one in the "xinetd" service (which normally runs only on servers). My computer was also infected, but fortunately I noticed the attack and stopped it on time - I heard my disk working hard when I didn't issue any instruction that required the disk, so I ran "ps", found the culprit that was copying files in order to later encrypt them, so I checked exactly what it was doing, killed that process and its parents, then found and removed the files that started it, all before any actual damage was done.

The advantage of Linux, is that it does exactly what you ask it to do, no more and no less, rather than run what the company that sold you the operating-system wants. In other words, there is much less background noise and you also have much finer access and control over what is being run. The downside, is that you need to know what you are doing and run what you want manually.

Untrained people cannot use Linux, but ordinary people in the street who do not need it for their work, should not be using computers in the first place - computers are professional tools and should not be handled by lay-people who only seek entertainment, vanity and to escape from real life on the physical plane into some drug-induced virtual existence.

Philip S: You say "Like the first Microsoft has so many more users than Linux so which one would you hack?". I'm not so certain that that is correct.

Do you realise that the Android Operating System is Linux based? There are 100's of millions if not a billion or more more mobile phones running Android.

But its not only just found in Android phones: my smart TV uses Linux, so does my printer, my Android tablet and also my broadband router (I also had an e-reader that ran Linux). All of these devices of mine connect to the Internet (directly or indirectly) and are thus exposed to potential hacking.

So, contrary to what you said, because it is used in so many devices and appliances Linux is very common in households and has lots of users. In many of these cases there is very good incentive for hackers to hack these systems for ransom-ware, eg: think about how much ransom people would you be prepared to pay to unlock a phone's data or how much they could be blackmailed for if the hacker downloaded data such as photos of a compromising/personal nature.

But even outside of households it is common in business and industry-- for example this post most probably bounced through a computer running Linux on its way from me to you because Linux is well represented in the hardware infrastructure that the Internet runs on. There are plenty of targets for ransom-ware here.

However, where Linux is not typically found is in desktops/laptops- which is what most people think is what a computer is when you talk about what OSes are commonly found on computers. The majority of folk don't realise just how many computers they really have in their homes besides the desktop- eg: there are computers in their cars, entertainment equipment, white-goods, gym equipment, security and alarms, etc., etc, etc.... Most of these computers will have an operating system.

Well first up I think it's you lot from the CFR which are dangerous to society.

So what are you trying to sell me here? Driverless cars?
No, I don't want anyone to be able to potentially remotely hack my car.
I want to drive it myself, I don't need your computer to drive, I earned my license fair and square.
I want some big heavy tank that will ram those driverless cars out of my way when they go haywire leaving me safe from your stupid hackable computer programs.

Unemployment. Lost Jobs...
This is like the biggest bullcrap story played on the world.
Stop giving people money, and give them a job instead.
'Socialist Base Level Employment' model, Double Dole for anyone anyone who wants to work.
Remove the 'I can't get a job excuse', 'create a culture of employment within the unemployed', and stop them from being idle too long in the first place to mess their lives up.
Find something for them to do. Simple.

"No one evidently thought about how vulnerable the Internet could be from people with malicious motives."

Mate I really don't like all these lies, WannaCry used NSA's tools.
Therefore it was really intelligence agencies who have malicious motives.
And the public who've paid the price.

My guess is that once all the back doors were exposed they'd need everyone to download a new 'patch' to close the known backdoors and open new ones so intelligence agencies can still access everyones computers.

I can simply hold the ignorant view 'the whole world is full of crap' and I'm probably right just as often as I'm not.
Because it's all just theatre to sell an agenda whichever that may be at the time.
Nothing more nothing less, it is what it is.

A battle for the minds of the useful idiots.

thinkabit - If you read the question that was asked it states "computer security" Although a mobile phone could be technically classed as one, but it is not for my answer.

As for the rest of your comments I will just direct you to the release of shadow toolkit 2017 the release of the NSA hacking tools all of what you say are linux based are easily hackable from your phone to your television etc.

Ransomware is about locking people out of their files on computers to get money, WHEN there is as much sensitive data and the phone completely could disrupt a person livelihood as a computer can come back and tell me I am wrong.

Philip S, certainly hackers will aim at the more populous target.
Or perhaps the easiest target.
I am told that perhaps a majority of web sites, there seems to be no
statistics, use Linux web servers.

Yuyutsu said; Untrained people cannot use Linux.
I disagree, it has all the facilities that Windows has, Firefox for
browsing and a selection of other browsers, two or three emailers
presentation, spreadsheets etc etc etc and thousands of other programs
all for free.

It does not suffer from all those drop in adverts that windows users
have to put up with. I would never go back to the microsoft product.

I think that its relative immunity to hacking is probably due to
the permissions system. It could be one thing to get a malicious
program into the memory but impossible to get it running.

So if anyone wants to make an easy change to Linux you can get it
over the internet and install in a separate partition.
That is called Dual boot, you can leave windows intact and have Linux
in a separate partition.
For an easy installation look for the Ubuntu distribution.
http://www.wikihow.com/Install-Ubuntu-Linux
Another is the Debian distribution.
Look for the Ubuntu Users magazine and install from a DVD.

For Windows 10 users, there is no rental requirement for any software
and everything is free.

Bazz -Quote "I think that its relative immunity to hacking is probably due to the permissions system."

There are programs available for Microsoft that can do the same or very similar, but the problem is people just letting every thing run because they don't know what it is or there are too many things starting so they click all of them.

Can't say much more because you used the words "relative immunity"
simple fact is what man makes man can break, banks spend millions of dollars on security and still get robbed.

Your one about dual boot is a way around for the average person, what they do is use microsoft with internet disconnected then use Linux to do things on inet.

I would not trust windows 10 for anything unless a number of other programs were installed to stop it from spying and key logging what you do.

I reckon the author has gained inspiration by using my "The fifth battle domain - cyberspace" News Weekly Cover Story of July 21, 2007 at http://www.newsweekly.com.au/article.php?id=2999

In July 2007 I said: "Wars have long been fought on land and sea. In the last 100 years most countries have also fought in the air, and some (such as the US, Russia and, more recently, China) are able to fight in space. A fifth warfare domain is gradually being defined - cyberspace." http://www.newsweekly.com.au/article.php?id=2999

In May 2017 Suter said: "...cyber-warfare is now the fifth dimension of warfare (after land, sea, air, and space). Cyber-warfare is inevitable because too much of humankind's affairs are being linked via information technology. Critical infrastructure is vulnerable to attack."

Also in July 2007, using overt sources from the Internet, I pre-empted Edward Snowdens disclosures by 6 years:

• The Department of Homeland Security's National Cyber Security Division, which works collaboratively with public, private and international entities to secure cyberspace and America's cyber assets;

• The CIA's Information Operations Center Analysis Group, which evaluates foreign threats to US computer systems, particularly those that support critical infrastructures;

• The FBI National Security Branch, which, among other activities, can install bugs or wiretaps against suspected foreign terrorists; and

• The US National Security Agency (NSA), which secretly collects and analyses foreign and (controversially) domestic communications, and protects US Government communications. US Air Force Intelligence and other US military intelligence arms closely work with the NSA and support it with manpower for interception and language translation tasks.

Again see http://www.newsweekly.com.au/article.php?id=2999

Pete

Philip S, I have a second computer on my desk that has dual boot
Win 7 and Ubuntu. The only reason I have it is my wife's Fit Bits
logging program only has a windows version.
I am just too lazy to write a program or use the spreadsheet.
I should have a look to see if there is an equivalent on source forge
or somewhere else.
I think the permissions together with needing root access and the
passwords needed and read, write and/or execute permissions that makes
it a much more difficult exercise for malware writers.

I recently got myself an Eftpos card, & destroyed my old debit card. It can only be used at terminals, & requires a pin to be entered.

After cutting up my old debit card, I feel a little safer.

I have never had a credit card. Am I kidding my self?

Interesting article about 11YO kid hacking into room full of security experts devices.

http://www.news.com.au/technology/online/hacking/sinister-implication-of-electronic-toys/news-story/8c35459db5354b3584b1c5fbae3d72d0

A YOUNG boy has shocked an audience of security experts by casually hacking into their Bluetooth devices to control his electronic toy.

REUBEN Paul may be only 11 years old, but his technological prowess has wowed industry experts at a technology conference in the Netherlands.

The grade six student shocked an audience of security experts when he casually hacked into their Bluetooth devices to “weaponise” his robotic teddy bear.

His electronic bear, named Bob, is connected to the cloud via Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, and can send and receive messages.

The youngster used a small credit card-sized computer known as a “Raspberry Pi” to scan the hall for Bluetooth devices and download dozens of phone numbers.

Then, using one of the numbers, he hacked into his bear using the Python coding language and turned on Bob’s lights and recorded audio from the crowd.

“IOT (Internet of Things) home appliances, things that can be used in our everyday lives, our cars, lights refrigerators, everything like this that is connected can be used and weaponised to spy on us or harm us,” he later explained to AFP.

His father, Mano Paul, told the agency he has always been surprised by his son’s ability, and said he became concerned when Reuben easily hacked a toy car.

“It means that my kids are playing with timebombs, that over time somebody who is bad or malicious can exploit.”

Electronic toys can be used to steal private information such as passwords, use GPS to pinpoint a person’s location, or spy on children by recording audio and video.

Reuben later tweeted: “It was fun but I hope people did not miss the message — secure IoT before the Internet of Toys becomes and Internet of Threats”.

If the experts in the room are anything go by, he’s got a bright future ahead.

Suter is no original.

As early as 2006 (7 years before Snowden, 11 years before Suter) I wrote in my article article on OLO [1]:

"Doubtless some Australians making phone calls, sending emails or blogging on the Internet may come under the scrutiny of Dr Kass and Cyber Command.

...The zealous statements of Dr Kass are clearly meant for US military consumption, but the tone should be of concern to Australians. The NSA, which is the chief monitor of cyberspace, has been traditionally seen as a conservative, perhaps moderate, intelligence organisation.

If an aggressive Cyber Command (as described by Dr Kass) is to be closely integrated with the NSA, the NSA may drift in the same aggressive political direction."

See "Cyber Command may soon watch over us" 2006 http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=5053&page=0

Pete

Dear Bazz,

«Yuyutsu said; Untrained people cannot use Linux.
I disagree, it has all the facilities that Windows has, Firefox for
browsing and a selection of other browsers, two or three emailers
presentation, spreadsheets etc etc etc and thousands of other programs
all for free.»

Those who use the above features are not in fact using Linux - they actually use a "desktop" layer that is built on top of Linux and treat their system as if it was a Windows box. For them, Linux is a black box and if they don't know how to access it directly, then they also wouldn't know how to protect themselves from the vulnerabilities of the Desktop layer.

Yuyutsu,
Not really true. The X level where most of the desktop facilities live
only appears to be a Windowes like enviroment.
However lurking immeadiatly below it is the full blown daemon.
That is why I believe that viruses and other malware do not appear.
They do not get written as the effort and fewer m/cs do not make it
worth while. The malware even if it gets loaded, nothing is where it
should be and anyway it can't be started.