Data-leak lessons learned from the ‘Climategate’ hack.
Hacking is not my cup of tea, but there are certainly things to be garnered by this security breech. Someone had the cajones to out the lies about global warming.
Lesson 1: Don’t let users put passwords in their signatures. One of the scientists included both on his e-mail signature — which means that anyone receiving an e-mail from this guy had access to his files
Lesson 2: Don’t evade Freedom of Information requests. As noted in the Science Magazine link above, many of the e-mails discuss how to destroy documents in anticipation of Freedom of Information requests.
Lesson 3: Lock down sensitive servers. Another theory behind the supposed “hack” is that the files were compiled in response to a FOIA request — then stored on an unlocked server.
Lesson 4: Advise your users that all e-mails (and indeed, voice, message and video communications) may be the subject of public disclosure. You may work in an industry that’s not subject to FOIA — but anyone can get sued. And the process of “e-discovery” may make plenty of data public.
H/T GR
Oh yeah, and you should NOT throw out your raw data.
November 29, 2009 at 12:33 am
Ironically, what these “scientists” lacked in smarts caused their undoing. He really had is password in his e-mail signature? Outstanding!
November 29, 2009 at 1:25 am
Yeah, he really did it. Let’s see, there is a term for that…idiot savant.
November 30, 2009 at 7:57 pm
Or just plain “idiot!”
lol
Where are those guys from? The University of East Ganglandia?
November 30, 2009 at 8:22 pm
Yeah, they use the short version Anglia.
November 29, 2009 at 1:01 pm
Are these people related to Joe Biden?
November 29, 2009 at 2:31 pm
Maybe distant cousins. Really, a password in your email signature? That is a Biden.
November 30, 2009 at 7:57 pm
Didn’t he say he picked up that tip from Obama?
lol
November 30, 2009 at 8:22 pm
I believe he did. hee hee
November 30, 2009 at 11:13 pm
Joe writes his pw’s on his hand in permanent marker.
December 1, 2009 at 1:14 am
And on his forehead as “back up” just in case!
December 1, 2009 at 2:03 am
ROFL I think so too.
November 30, 2009 at 11:12 pm
so this guy was so clever he couldn’t think of a password other than his name, title, or employer address? apparently he couldn’t remember the computer usage policy he signed either. this isn’t even hacking. it’s reversed self-social engineering. the IT admins prolly left the files unsecured intentionally to get rid of the cretin.
December 1, 2009 at 2:03 am
You might have a NYT scoop raging. Perhaps the brilliant scientists really don’t have a clue.
December 1, 2009 at 1:21 am
Raging, how else you gonna find some one so qualified to do all that climate-change-warming data cooking recipe?
I mean after all the professor got his degrees from the bestest place on earth for that. They came from here in Upper Austria.
Click and see.
http://maps.google.com/maps/place?cid=6688614234353387707&q=graham+norton+%22upper+austria%22&hl=en&cd=1&cad=src:pplink&ei=2G4US_ypH5PSMMeakfYB
December 1, 2009 at 5:13 am
ROFLLL
Must be Arnold’s origin as well. LOL
December 12, 2009 at 8:38 pm
“Climategate” started out when there appeared on the Internet a collection of e-mails of a group of climatologists who work in the University of East Anglia in England. These documents reveal that some climatologists of international preeminence have manipulated the data of their investigations and have strongly tried to discredit climatologists who are not convinced that the increasing quantities of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere are the cause of global warming.
It is true that a majority of the scientists who study climatic tendencies in our atmosphere have arrived at the conclusion that the world’s climate is changing, and they have convinced a group of politicians, some of whom are politically powerful, of the truth of their conclusions.
A minority, however, is skeptical. Some believe that recent data that suggest that the average temperature of the atmosphere is going up can be explained by natural variations in solar radiation and that global warming is a temporary phenomenon. Others believe that the historical evidence indicating that the temperature of the atmosphere is going up at a dangerous rate is simply not reliable.
Such lacks of agreement are common in the sciences. They are reduced and eventually eliminated with the accumulation of new evidence and of more refined theories or even by completely new ones. Such debates can persist for a period of decades. Academics often throw invective at one another in these debates. But typically this does not mean much.
But the case of climate change is different. If the evidence indicates that global warming is progressive, is caused principally by our industrial processes, and will probably cause disastrous changes in our atmosphere before the end of the twenty-first century, then we do not have the time to verify precisely if this evidence is reliable. Such a process would be a question of many years of new investigations. And if the alarmist climatologists are right, such a delay would be tragic for all humanity.
The difficulty is that economic and climatologic systems are very complicated. They are not like celestial mechanics, which involves only the interaction of gravity and centrifugal force, and efforts to construct computerized models to describe these complicated systems simply cannot include all the factors that are influential in the evolution of these complicated systems.
All this does not necessarily indicate that the alarmist climatologists are not right. But it really means that if global warming is occurring, we cannot know exactly what will be the average temperature of our atmosphere in the year 2100 and what will be the average sea level of the world’s ocean in that year.
It also means that we cannot be confident that efforts by the industrialized countries to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere will have a significant influence on the evolution of the world’s climate.
Alas, the reduction of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere would be very costly and would greatly change the lives of all the inhabitants of our planet–with the possibility (perhaps even the probability!) that all these efforts will be completely useless.
Harleigh Kyson Jr.
December 13, 2009 at 1:09 am
Welcome Harleigh. Thank you for your insightful comment. Unfortunately, imo the data is being manipulated for political purposes. That is unacceptable. Science should never be subjectively used for political purposes. There is much to be gained by manipulating the data one way or another. Statistics can be manipulated in a number of ways. The world gains nothing by altering data to suit certain groups that will profit greatly from such shenanigans.