本文推薦的考研英語泛讀文章是關于網絡安全問題。In the nascent “internet of things”, security is the last thing on people’s minds.當今網絡世界確實存在諸多不安全因素,到底該如何應對?通讀這篇文章,讓我們來一探究竟。
Now, worries about cyber-security remain mostly theoretical. But again, the warning lights are flashing. In 2014 researchers at the Sans Institute, a firm that offers computer-security training, said they had discovered a botnet of digital video recorders (DVRs). The sabotaged machines spent their time crunching through the complicated calculations needed to mine bitcoins, a virtual currency, for the botnet’s controllers.
Fortunately, big computer firms do. Two decades of bitter experience mean much more attention is paid to security by the likes of Microsoft and Google. But getting non-computer companies to follow suit will mean a change in corporate culture.
Computer firms have learned that writing secure code is almost impossible and that openness is the best defence. Other companies, though, are still defensive. In 2013, for instance, Volkswagen appealed to an English court to block publication of work by Flavio Garcia, a researcher at Birmingham University who had uncovered a serious problem with the remote key fobs that lock VW’s cars. The computer industry has long-since learned that such “white-hat” hackers are its friends.
But the biggest difficulty is that, for now, companies have few incentives to take security seriously. As was the case with the internet in the 1990s, most of these threats are still on the horizon. This means getting security wrong has—for the moment—no impact on a firm’s reputation or its profits. That too will change, says Dr Anderson, at least in those industries where the consequences of a breach are serious.