News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on Hospitals across England hit by large-scale cyber-attack. Parent comment

Re:Hospitals across England hit by large-scale cyber-attack by notahacker on Friday May 12, 2017 @02:03PM (#14326275)
Tbf, a lot of civil engineering is pretty basic physics with huge safety margins applied, and if the requisite test was "will it withstand a targeted attack at the most vulnerable point?" most structures would never have got off the ground.

I think most of society has experienced enough software crashes and had enough anti-virus warnings to realise computers are a wee bit unstable and insecure (as well as being well aware they can't judge secure software from insecure software). If anything, it's HN that's the outlier for faith in internet-connected software to do stuff like drive our cars safely.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Hospitals across England hit by large-scale cyber-attack by olleromam91 on Friday May 12, 2017 @02:51PM (#14326755)
Civil projects are certainly over engineered because the life safety risks are clearly understood by all parties making the decisions. Unfortunately the "most of society" argument is clearly not true yet. Otherwise they would be springing the cash for proper IT and software security.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Hospitals across England hit by large-scale cyber-attack by type0 on Friday May 12, 2017 @04:20PM (#14327542)
> Civil projects are certainly over engineered because the life safety risks are clearly understood by all parties making the decisions.

The software that is run in the hospitals should also be over-engineered because when it doesn't work properly it could be a matter of life and death

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Hospitals across England hit by large-scale cyber-attack by bostik on Friday May 12, 2017 @05:42PM (#14328175)
> Civil projects are certainly over engineered

When talking about bridges, roads, buildings, tunnels, power grids and sewage pipelines - just to name a few - there is one additional factor that we should always consider.

Once made available, all of these will see constant use and they become part of the fabric of society. Taking parts of core infrastructure out to fix then has severe repercussions. Total cost of invasive maintenance will be a lot higher than the fairly simply calculated cost of on-site fixes.

I will gladly accept overengineering and nearly ludicrous safety margins.

[ Parent | on HN ]