"Its old but it works”

Post here about equipment carried on ships
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Little h
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"Its old but it works”

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HMS EnterprisE (H88)

Interesting piece about IT systems on board @HMSEnterprise by embarked tech/defence reporter @GazTheJourno.

"Its old but it works”


, 1Windows XP, as seen in the wild aboard survey ship HMS Enterprise.jpg
, HMS Enterprise H88 DrlYrExX0AQ0IXV.jpg

Source; NavyLookout on Twitter - Save The Royal Navy.org

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Software
Windows XP? Pfff! Parts of the Royal Navy are running Win ME
Fear not, Apple fanbois, they're also running Macintosh

By Gareth Corfield 9 Nov 2018 at 12:19

Boatnotes The Royal Navy is running Windows ME – and XP, and even an early version of Apple Macintosh. But all is not as alarmingly obsolete as it may appear.

Your correspondent, during a few days embedded aboard seabed survey ship HMS Enterprise, asked the crew what systems were in operation aboard the ship’s networks. The answer was a real mixture.

“We’re 5-10 years behind the rest of the world,” said one, only half-joking. Enterprise was built in 2003 and most of the IT infrastructure aboard her dates back to then, with new OSes and mission software installed and patched as required.

Enterprise, being a survey ship, largely runs civilian off-the-shelf systems, other than the expected Secret-level stuff necessary for her commanders to talk to Navy HQ in the UK. Her internal network, the Defence Information Infrastructure (DII – with a logo suspiciously similar to the old Intel Inside graphic), boasts, among other things, Windows 7, Windows XP and Windows ME boxes – though, as another one of the hydrographers off-handedly shrugged when asked why this was: “Because it works.”

Windows ME reached the end of its extended support period in 2006. XP officially died in 2014, though the usual pay-if-you-want-it extension applied for another few years after that. Windows 7 has just been given three years to live by Microsoft.

There’s nothing IT-wise on Enterprise that wouldn’t look out of place to a sysadmin poking round a corporate branch office whose IT needs had been forgotten about for a decade. With that said, all the IT kit aboard, regardless of age, is there because it works reliably when required – and, crucially, all of it is air-gapped (or rather, water-gapped).

“It’s all standalone, not connected to the outside world,” Petty Officer Parry from the ship’s weapon engineering department told me.*

“All USB ports are locked down,” added PO Parry. The usual network policies to stop people from doing IT-related things they shouldn’t are all enforced here; almost nobody has access to the ship’s CD/DVD-RW drives, while the different networks aboard do not talk to each other and personnel are ordered not to try to move data from, say, the DII network to the maritime survey equipment network. While the survey data onboarding point in the ship’s Baltic Room is networked to the survey chart office just off the bridge, it doesn’t talk to the Warship Electronic Chart Display and Information System (WECDIS) navigational software.

While there is Wi-Fi aboard for personal devices, this is a relatively new thing that was only installed a year ago. The router for that talks purely to a satellite dish, which in turn functions like any other internet gateway. If you wanted to compromise it, in all honesty you probably could – though all you’d achieve is the silencing of the ship’s very readable Twitter feed and discovering that the wardroom’s internet history is just like any other group of millennials (and confused Generation X 1st lieutenants trying to work out what the cut-off age for a millennial is).

Infosec at sea, outwardly at least, doesn’t seem half as difficult as infosec on land. ®


Source; The Registerhttps://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/11/09/royal_ ... os_at_sea/


, 1HMS Enterprise, HMS Hurworth, HMS Ramsey and 2 others DrJzLTuWkAAI5JR.jpg large.jpg
, DrOup_QX0AAjIGj.jpg
Teamwork makes the dream work! @HMSGrimsby, @HMSHurworth, @HMSEnterprise, @HMSCattistock, @HMSRamsey on Exercise #TridentJuncture in Norway.

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Keep an eye out for The Register's Boatnotes stories over the coming week. Our man spent four days aboard HMS Enterprise, at the kind invitation of the Royal Navy, absorbing as much as he could about naval IT, data-crunching and life at sea aboard a British warship at the end of a major NATO exercise.
Bootnote

* “Weapon engineering”, in Royal Navy-speak, mainly refers to any system that isn’t needed to sail the ship from A to B or keep the crew alive and well. As well as guns and missiles, this also covers communication and information systems – known as CIS, in the inevitable military acronym.
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Little h
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ivorthediver
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Re: "Its old but it works”

Unread post by ivorthediver »

Thanks Harry , I must admit I have often thought about the systems used and their reliability in this age of hackers at every corner
"What Ever Floats your Boat"
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oldsalt
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Re: "Its old but it works”

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In Hecla, Ocean Survey ship 1967 we had a computor, exactly what it was used for I don't know. The Lt/Cdr Schoolie ran the thing, I do know we couldn't beat it at noughts & crosses.
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ivorthediver
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Re: "Its old but it works”

Unread post by ivorthediver »

Ahhhhh but could it play uckers ?
"What Ever Floats your Boat"
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oldsalt
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Re: "Its old but it works”

Unread post by oldsalt »

No!
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