Your daily round-up of some of the other stories in the news
Canada warns its election faces hacking
Canada has become the latest country to warn that its upcoming elections – due in 2019 – could be the target of hackers. The country’s Communications Security Establishment said at the end of last week that it’s “very likely” that hacktivist groups “will deploy cyber capabilities” to influence the federal election.
However, while Russia has been fingered as the likely sponsors of attacks on the US and French elections, Canada said in its report that “we have not observed nation-states using cyber capabilities with the purpose of influencing the democratic process in Canada during an election”.
Instead, the report warns, “we expect that multiple hacktivist groups will very likely deploy cyber capabilities in an attempt to influence the democratic process during the 2019 federal election”, adding that they expect any attacks to be “low-sophistication” and aimed at political parties, politicians and the media rather than the electoral process itself, thanks to Canada’s paper-based voting system.
‘Record’ ransomware payment made
A South Korean web hosting company has paid what’s thought to be the record sum of more than $1m in Bitcoins as a ransom to unlock more than 150 of its servers which were attacked by ransomware thought to be of the Erebus family, which targets both Windows and Linux computers. The BBC reported that the attackers had encrypted data on 153 Linux servers and some 3,400 customer websites.
The hosting company, Nayana, has apparently been negotiating with the attackers, who are reported initially to have demanded a payment of $4.4m in Bitcoin to unlock its servers.
It’s hard to be sure if the payment made by Nayana really is a record, as there’s no reliable data on who pays up and who doesn’t. Sophos CTO Joe Levy is pragmatic about the issue of paying attackers, saying in the wake of the WannaCry attack: “In general, paying is a bad idea unless the organization is truly desperate to get irreplaceable data back and when it is known that the ransom payment works.”
Humans should ‘go back to the moon’
The last time humans landed on the moon was back in 1972 – and now it’s time humans went back to our satellite, says Professor Stephen Hawking.
Speaking at the Starmus festival being held in Norway, the professor said that humans should aim to be back on the moon by 2020, with a lunar base being built in 30 years’ time, and that we should also aim to send humans to Mars by 2025.
The professor said that aiming to go back to the moon and beyond would “completely change the future of humanity. I hope it would unite competitive nations in a single goal, to face the common challenge for us all.”
He added: “We are running out of space and the only places to go to are other worlds. It is time to explore other solar systems. Spreading out may be the only thing that saves us from ourselves.”
Catch up with all of today’s stories on Naked Security
Wilderness
Another swing and a miss from Hawking. That was almost as insightful as his “Fat people are fat because they eat too much and don’t exercise enough.” statement he released a few months ago. We cannot solve overpopulation by going to the moon. It will still ruin the planet if we let it. Next, he’ll be telling poor people that they just need more money and they won’t be poor any more. He is a smart man, but jeez, captain unhelpful.
Marvin
We may not “solve over-population” by going to the Moon, but if we are going to wreck this planet, in the (very) long run the only way to save “the species” is to send our DNA to another viable planet in another solar system (probably in the form of a viable group of humans in some form of spaceship able to sustain “the group” – as opposed to specific individuals – for the very long time it would take to travel there).
Trouble is we probably won’t vote for such a project! But if we are going to wreck this planet, how else can our species avoid extinction?
OldDunc
Why should we care about saving such a destructive species? Why should it be encouraged to devastate other planets? Luckily, it is unlikely in the extreme that we will be able to reach any habitable planets before Natural Selection takes us out.
Max
He didn’t say it will solve overpopulation, and much less save our planet from us ruining it. Rather, he said it is the only way to mitigate our constant growth. If our population keeps increasing as it is now, sooner or later we will run out of space even if we take every other measure to make our impact more sustainable. If we don’t want to stop population growth, finding more space is the only option.
OldDunc
The trouble is, colonizing other planets won’t “mitigate our constant growth” either. I think you just contradicted yourself by paraphrasing the assertion you denied that Hawking was making. But hey, religious faith isn’t constrained by mere logic.
Lee
There are plenty of people who will volunteer for a one way trip to the moon so we just need to pick the right group of people and get them sent there instead of the constantly talking about it!
We have the technology now so lets get on with it.
Entente Cordiale
Moonraker, anybody?
WS
There is a reason humans stopped landing on the moon: it’s uninhabitable. As far as we know, either is any other planet in or outside of our solar system. Hawkins has way too much time on his hands.