William Hague under cyber attack

William Hague alerts the nation to the presence of cyber-reds under the Foreign Office bed, but if this article is anything to go by it just sounds as if the government IT systems aren't very secure and that they suffered from pretty ordinary malware and phishing attacks.

Here is the Zeus malware which Hague is referring to.



It does look quite nasty, and I'm so glad that I left most of these security woes behind by moving to Linux. I'd suggest that the Foreign Office do the same, and they might also save some money in the process, as well as increasing the security of the realm.

"We're witnessing an exponential rise in the misuse of cyberspace. In a decade, this could be out of control, and we have to start to do the thinking now."

Five or more years ago I might have agreed with this opinion, with the tide of spam and computer viruses being seemingly unstoppable, but now I think this is just alarmism possibly disguising an agenda to create yet another quango.

"General Sir David Richards, chief of the defence staff, last month said the UK needed its own Cyber Command, similar to that set by by the US defence department."

Modern software and good IT support: yes.  A "cyber command"?  Probably just an excuse to employ a few more of your friends and relations on exorbitant consultancy fees at taxpayers expense, and give them smart looking quasi-military uniforms.

I'm not Bruce Schneier, but my understanding is that the problem of botnets is primarily a problem of the prevalence of older versions of Microsoft Windows using the notoriously insecure Internet Explorer browser and where the user logs in with administrator access by default.  Conduct an IT audit and upgrade or replace the relevant systems, and this is a problem which you can solve without the need for creating a whole new government or military department populated by iPad-tapping cyber generals.