UK General Election 8th June: Shake it all about?

[Junkenstein]

Companies are one thing, institutions are quite another. How long do you think it will take the NHS to move on from XP? The procurement process alone will take months, if not years, regardless of how insecure the system may be in the interim. And that's just one, factor in the job centre systems, Immigration, DVLA, HMRC etc. etc. and you're looking at hundreds of systems at a minimum. Probably thousands if not tens of thousands.

It gets funnier when you start thinking about the total costs of doing this. The upgrade to something more secure is comparably cheap compared to the training costs involved in getting who the fuck knows how many people trained on something that isn't what they've been using for X years. I'd guess the training costs are an order of magnitude larger than the upgrade. Which have their own set of procurement processes which will take months, maybe years....

Which makes this a clusterfuck of unknown proportions as you get into the details. Whichever government is eventually formed now gets to deal with both the brexit crap and fallout and a huge list of additional unforeseen expenses at home to try and provide a veneer of security. Which will be inevitably compromised and the whole cycle starts up again.

[Cain]

Of course, it would help if anyone applied security patches regularly.  MS has done such a bad job in the past, with its patches breaking Windows and Office functionality that companies and government agencies alike purposefully ignore best practice and don't apply it until they test it themselves (and if anything happens in the meantime, they just cry "advanced persistent threat" and go about their business).  MS did release a critical security patch for this exploit back in March, but clearly a lot of companies did not see fit to apply it.

I did a sort review on WCry for the law firm I do contract work with, and it's a clusterfuck endemic to the IT security industry and government thinking about IT security. There's plenty of blame to go around, and believe me, they all deserve a fair share of it.

[Vanadium Gryllz]

Government systems are also (presumably) operating on bespoke software that may or may not work with newer versions of Windows, further complicating system upgrades.

[Cain]

Indeed, which is why the government had a contract with Microsoft specifically for computer security updates.

Until Hunt cancelled it.

[Faust]

In fairness to MS they released a patch all the way back to XP for this one, first patch for XP in years. But yes, there are a worrying amount of systems running critical infrastructure that are on archaic systems, Or critical systems that only get updates periodically (quarterly or even annually is common enough to see for some big systems)

[P3nT4gR4m]

Or critical systems that only get updates periodically (quarterly or even annually is common enough to see for some big systems)

You only need to have been burned by one kamikaze MS update for that to seem a lot more reasonable than it might first sound. Anyone running XP as a daily driver, tho, pretty much deserves to spend their every waking hour staring at a ransomware prompt.

[Pæs]

Risky Biz podcast has a good summary of WannaCry news, debunking some myths and collating some coverage.
https://risky.biz/RB455/

I haven't finished the episode yet, but I'm not expecting many inaccuracies from these two.

[Cain]

Tory lead has halved since the publication of their shit-tastic manifesto.

Despite pulling out the big guns (IRA, MI5 surveillance!), Labour only trail the Tories by 9 points now. 

[Junkenstein]

Wait, what? Been out of it for a couple of days, don't tell me the ira are supporting Labour and or hate corbyn too.

I suppose also add corbyn to the long, long list of "other politicians treated worse than idiot".

[Cain]

No, Corbyn is soft on the IRA, soft on defence, so soft that MI5 had to watch him because of NATSHUNAL SECORITIES.  According to the Tories.

[Junkenstein]

Silly me. So "corbyn the ira sympathiser" is the new line, he? Seems like a little late for smears, shouldn't Murdoch have had that in hand months ago?

Apart from this seems to be manifesto nonsense. Leaving aside these are worthless documents whenever they are made as they're universally ignored after taking power, it does show how much of a shitshow this election is. The senile fuck that called it has taken weeks to produce one when it should have been available the day after. No costings from the Tories beyond "we're going to keep the eu rights bits we like and claim we are original". Speaks volumes for what can be expected post brexit crap, and probably before.

[Cain]

The lack of costing is hilarious.  The NHS is going to get "more funding".  It's so fact-free that even the Daily Mail wouldn't allow it as an op-ed.

And I think it's going to have a snowball effect.  When you continually fuck up, despite having all the cards, and keep talking about "strong and stable", even an electorate as dimwitted as the British will notice there is a certain discrepancy between the rhetoric and the facts.  It may not result in a complete loss for the Tories, but anything less than a landslide victory that they were projected at the start of the election campaign is a massive failure on their part.  Even if the Labour Party only sustain their current popularity, May will only have 46 seat majority.  Hardly a mandate from the country.

[Cain]

I'm starting to wonder if the Tories aren't purposefully trying to throw the election at this point. 

Step 1: introduce terrible social care policy that will negatively affect your key voters
Step 2: Declare that there is "no going back" on policy
Step 3: Go back on policy.
Step 4: Achieve all of this within 4 days, including a weekend.

I mean, it's either that or its gross incompetence, and either seems likely at this point.  Throw the election, let Labour (fail to) deal with Brexit, blame Labour for a thousand years for not getting a miracle deal like Theresa May would have (try to avoid laughing).

[Vanadium Gryllz]

There must be some members of the Conservative camp that are thinking a loss at this election would make a lot of their immediate problems someone else's.

[Junkenstein]

I'm starting to wonder if the Tories aren't purposefully trying to throw the election at this point. 

Step 1: introduce terrible social care policy that will negatively affect your key voters
Step 2: Declare that there is "no going back" on policy
Step 3: Go back on policy.
Step 4: Achieve all of this within 4 days, including a weekend.

I mean, it's either that or its gross incompetence, and either seems likely at this point.  Throw the election, let Labour (fail to) deal with Brexit, blame Labour for a thousand years for not getting a miracle deal like Theresa May would have (try to avoid laughing).

I've considered, the same thing, along the lines xaz reasoned. The only simple alternative I can see is sheer arrogance which is possible. If the Tories win with this kind of no effort and constant fuckups it'll be taken as a mandate to do whatever they please.