Quote:
Originally Posted by SSJTWIZTA
|
I'm not sure if the thread will be viewable to the public, but this is the response from someone working at CERN who's keeping SA updated on what's happening. emphasis is mine
The Large Hadron Collider MEGATHREAD / FAQ - The Something Awful Forums
Quote:
To a certain extent, true. The 'LHC' didn't get hacked, a single user-level computer account was accessed which only had access to a monitoring webpage for the CMS experiment.
The network on which the experiments and accelerator run is entirely seperate to that of the accessible network from outside CERN. The experiments and data they produce are far too critical to be sitting on an open network. You cannot access any of the computers in the control rooms or experiment caverns remotely, and they all only permit outbound connections.
The hack was a pretty typical webpage defacement, and while embarrasing for the CMS, it isn't a big deal. There are 10,000+ user accounts at cern, and users will always lose passwords or use insecure ones in any computing environment. The sheer number of accounts at cern makes it a statistical certainty that one or two will be compromised, and the computing division is prepared for this.
|
They weren't "one step away" from anything significant. That's like saying that hacking a receptionist's computer at Microsoft is one step away from having access to their development servers.