Hackers hit LHC computer system, deemed "scary experience"

[Doug Brott]

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

Those already fearful of the Large Hadron Collider's potential Earth-ending capabilities may want to turn away for this one, as it looks like the situation has managed to get a bit more perilous, with a team of hackers apparently successful in mounting an attack on a system that is "one step away" from the computer system that controls of one of the LCH's massive detectors. According to The Telegraph newspaper, the group, calling itself the "Greek Security Team," left behind a half a dozen files on the system and damaged one CERN file, in addition to displaying the page above on the cmsmon.cern.ch website, which still remained inaccessible as of Friday. Somewhat disconcertingly, one of the scientists working at CERN simply described the incident as a "scary experience," with a CERN spokesperson further adding that they thought it was just someone "making the point that [the system] was hackable." Um, okaaaay.

[Via CNET News]

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[MicroBeta]

Now you would think that on a project as large as the LHC, and with the bulk of greatest minds in math, physics, engineering, and computing that they would have a solid firewall.

I can't wait for the experiments to start at the LHC.

Math/Physics are a hobby of mine and the LHC is about the coolest thing to ever to come along in Physics.

I run BOINC crunching for the Einstein @ Home project but I can't wait until there are work units avaliable to crunch for LHC.

http://einstein.phys.uwm.edu/

http://lhcathome.cern.ch/lhcathome/

BTW, there are many projects for BOINC. Some have to do with medical research as well as other areas of science.

http://boinc.berkeley.edu/

Mike