Science News

the Us Government Bottom of the League for Government Internet Security

The US government is laying itself wide open to cyber attacks - that's attacks on its computer system by terrorists or any kind of hacker. This week's New Scientist says the government scored an F grade in a recent security assessment- that's even worse than last year when it scored a D. Apparently users are very slack - they often don't bother to switch from the default password (which is often something really obvious like "password") and often when people leave their accounts are not closed down - so a lot of outsiders could have access to these computer systems.

2nd Dec 2001