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Who would be stupid enough to...

It seems that those pesky (allegedly) Chinese hackers are up to their old tricks again.

News on the wires this week indicate that not only have they stolen the details of more than a dozen US military weapons and technologies but now they've also left the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation red-faced after reports that the blueprints for its new headquarters were apparently snatched.

How embarrassing!

But I have to ask -- who are the idiots that put such sensitive data on a publicly accessible network such as the internet in the first place?

It strikes me that those who have engaged in such folly ought to be cleaning toilets, rather than being entrusted with the security of such sensitive data.

Given the number of critical pieces of critical infrastructure that have also been the target of attacks apparently delivered via the internet you'd think it might be time for a new "secure" net for such purposes -- don't you?

While running *everything* through the internet sounds like a great idea, it's an awfully risky one. No matter how many passwords you throw in their way, hackers will always find a way past your roadblocks -- if they have physical access to that network (and who doesn't have Net access these days?).

Surely the best idea, given that *everything* needs some form of interconnectivity these days, is to run a totally separate "securenet" which is not physically linked to the public internet. By eliminating any link, all the vital infrastructure and top-secret stuff can be effectively isolated from hackers -- be they in China, Iran or elsewhere.

Given the huge value of stuff such as weapons plans, power company systems and the like, it must be a justifiable cost to create this separate network solely for "critical" systems.

However, I strongly doubt we'll see the buffoons who are (ir)responsible for the current fiascos waking up and smelling the coffee any time soon. I suspect they'll just change their passwords from "pass" to "pass1" and blame others for their own deficiencies.

In the meantime, the general rule of thumb remains: if it's connected to the Net then it is NOT secure.

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