Eric Friese » Politics http://ericfriese.com Software Security and Other Stuff Thu, 05 Jan 2012 14:16:56 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 Poor Design Decisions http://ericfriese.com/2009/12/19/poor-design-decisions/ http://ericfriese.com/2009/12/19/poor-design-decisions/#comments Sat, 19 Dec 2009 15:29:24 +0000 Eric http://ericfriese.com/2009/12/19/poor-design-decisions/ The recent news of the Predator UAV getting “hacked” highlights the importance of making the right decisions at design time. The article says “some” of the drones have this vulnerability; which leads me to believe that the ones affected are probably the first generation. I have to give General Atomics the benefit of the doubt that all of the Predator drones do not have this vulnerability. Even still, the thought of putting an aircraft into production without encrypting the video data link is just poor judgment.

As a result, people are wanting the cybersecurity czar position to be filled. There’s a really good reason why that position has not been filled…it’s a do-nothing position. How could a position with no budget and no statutory power have influenced a situation like this? Realistically the person would just be a fall guy waiting on the day for a huge breach that he had no ability to prevent. Again, another poor design decision.

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