The queen opens center to defense against cyberthreats

[vemn]

The National Cyber Security Centre - part of intelligence agency GCHQ - started work in October as part of a £1.9bn five-year strategy.

 

[Wave]

Doubt it'll do much against software-based attacks; do they know how easy it is for a malware author to release their samples? As for education, there are so many forums for learning to code/posting code for assistance and people with great experience will help...

Look at the SysInternals forum by TechNet (MS), do you think everyone there asking for help and getting it back is really making genuine software? Haha.

 

[Ink]

@Wave Why don't you make a difference?

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NCSC Site

 

[Wave]

@Wave Why don't you make a difference?

What do you mean?

If you meant why I don't think it'll make a difference, it's because it's incredibly easy for someone to learn how to code and these days it's common to see kids getting started with game hacking -> this can easily evolve into malware development for destruction/money purposes. I think that this new center will help reduce the attacks/mitigate them to an extent, but certainly not enough IMO.

The problem is with money as far as I can see, because the sophisticated ransomware threats are all developed with profit as the result in exchange for someone else's damage/sadness, they don't care if a parent loses the holy communication pictures of their son who was taken in a tragic accident or if a business faces damages of £2m because of an employee who clicked the attachment... As long as people can make money from malware (regardless of what their involvement with it is - could be developing it, distribution, selling source codes, etc.).

As for learning to make malware, all it really takes is to study languages like Assembly, C and C++ normally like you would become a normal software engineer... Then read some books and follow around on some programming forums (even MSDN and the SysInternals TechNet forum, KernelMode forum, StackOverflow even - doesn't need to be a black-hat forum) and ask questions/read threads and you'll easily pick up on Windows Internals, which would be great for someone trying to do damage with a rootkit project.

I was wrong that this won't do anything, it certainly will help to an extent, but it won't be enough to change things that much compared to how they already are IMO.

Although, attacks like rootkits and viruses are not as prevalent in the wild anymore, thankfully. They've started to become more and more obsolete in the wild, most likely because profit is the goal instead of total destruction most of the time these days... Or because a lot of the malware in the wild is based on the .NET Framework these days (which tells me that it's young people making malware who lack experience as opposed to the experienced people... these days at least).

What do you think about the center? Do you think it'll change things a lot?

(btw sorry I misread the defense center thing, it seems to be for preventing network attacks and the such as opposed to normal malware distribution? Oops )

 

[vemn]

Everyone's Making a difference everywhere

 

[Solarquest]

I believe it will help.
I also think basics of cybersecurity should be tought in all schools; more and easier accessible cybersecurity courses should be available too.

 

[vemn]

I believe it will help.
I also think basics of cybersecurity should be tought in all schools; more and easier accessible cybersecurity courses should be available too.

Always good to start somewhere.