INDEX	May 19, 2022
Costa Rican government hacked to a full stop
The Government of Costa Rica has been brought to a standstill by hackers who have installed ransomware on its computers seizing them up so that they are not even able to pay their own employees. I am naturally sympathetic to the Costa Ricans since my own computers are hacked each and every day. Never a day goes by without some bloody evil criminal interfering with my computing. However, the Costa Ricans blame the Russians, or criminal gangs based in Russia, whereas my hackers are employed by the British Government. And the real villains of the piece are the NSA who collude with software developers to ensure that there are always backdoors in any software package. They do this on the grounds that they need to ensure they can enter any computer system in case it is being used by terrorists. Having created these back doors they can then be exploited by everyone and anyone, even Russian based Mafia style organisations. You may think this is not your problem until you see one of those self driving cars we are expected to have on our roads soon, heading high speed towards you because it has been hacked by a bunch of teenagers in a Californian bedroom. The NSA is an evil organisation that does nothing but harm to the world. But to return to the Costa Ricans. In order to get paid civil servants are having to send in paper evidence that they are employed and actually doing things. A bit like the old check in punch cards we used to produce. Maybe they will discover that the old way is really the best way. My dad was there when they started installing large, air conditioned computer rooms. He swore that the number of people employed in accounts had to go up to cater to the needs of the machines. It would be interesting if the Costa Ricans discovered they could actually get along better despite the hackers...
INDEX Jonathan Brind		May 19, 2022