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GOVERNMENT HAS ISSUED a tender to have a deliberate hacking attempt carried out on its networks to examine any security flaws.
The tender for the “cyber-exercise” has been issued by the Department of Communications, Energy & Natural Resources with the intention of testing the response time to “simulated ‘cyber’ incidents”.
A spokesperson from the Department of Communications, Energy & Natural Resources told TheJournal.ie that the tender was part of a structured exercise that would help “improve preparation and coordination in the event of emergencies.”
Describing the tender as a “proactive measure”, the spokesperson said that it would allow for “practise drills around procedures to be used during contingencies.”
They added:
It is anticipated that the exercise will be as inclusive as possible, engaging many government stakeholders. The exercise will not impinge on the normal functioning of any services or systems.
The findings of any after-exercise reports will determine the appropriate actions to be taken at that time,” the spokesperson said.
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The password is enda123
Why don’t they just call “anonymous” a bunch of big girls blouses and they’ll get it for free.
Its about time they started following other countries in this practice. Get the best hackers available and pay them to show you how your system can be hacked. Its a genius idea that could save millions in the long run, along with protecting sensitive data.
David, you act like this country will do it right. 24 hours in the country will be at a stand still with Fine Gael blaming Fianna Fáil and private sector blaming the public sector. Tut Tut.
That’s provided they actually listen to the hackers
They obviously can’t hack it themselves!!
Non story.
A single government department puts out an etender for penn testing and incident response.
If the journo who wrote this knew much about the industry he would know that most departments do this every few years, no big deal. Write a story on government IT wastage due to the lack of IT managed services consolidation across departments… theres a story.
Why don’t they clear the bank debt while they are at it nobody would notice
Good to see a bit of proactivity I suppose.
Thinly veiled attempt at hacker trap?
Next week – tender for consultations on how to steal cars….
Any serious hacker would never be stupid enough to oust themselves was a hacker. There are people who actually do this sort of work for a living and they’ll be the ones tendering
There’s “white hat” hackers. They’re the good guys. The “grey hat” hackers are a bit iffy but still alright. The “black hat” hackers are the guys like Anonymous who hack to cause harm
I’ll do it this afternoon for the craic. No fee neccesary.
Actually most Governments don’t bother sending out tenders like this so it’s good to see the Irish Government do this
One person?
Ha, I’d imagine the security this government uses would be hacked by a 2 year with a toy phone…
I’m sure some 15 year-old will do it for free. But, as usual, “consultants” will be paid hundreds of thousands – and then employed to fix it. Joke shop.
Remember the CAO site being shut down in 2010? The Government said it was a series of “malicious attacks”? Turned out it was related to all the Leaving Cert students trying to log on at the same time to see which college course they were offered. It turned out nobody in the CSO or Dept of Education understood this was likely to happen in the first place. They were expecting the kids to wait for the offer to arrive in the post, because it was always done that way before.
The big question should be, have the systems under test been designed to allow for surges in usage to allow for the required information to still be processed, distributed, received, acted upon and confirmed, all while receiving enough increased traffic from the public accessing the system, or will the system view this increased traffic as “malicious attacks” and so shut down and screw up everything?
netstat -vat
Say hello to your Chinese friends!
this is akin to paying for air
have your say