14Sep Hackers attack Large Hadron Collider computers to prove they’re vulnerable

GENEVA - JUNE 16: The older UAI central detec...

As the first particles began circulating in the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) this week, a group of hackers calling themselves the “Greek Security Team” penetrated computer systems inside CERN’s Geneva, Switzerland, facility, where the world’s biggest particle accelerator is housed, the Telegraph.co.uk reported today.

The hackers were reportedly targeting the Compact Muon Solenoid Experiment (CMS), a device in Cessy, France, built to monitor a wide range of particles and phenomena produced in high-energy collisions in the LHC. The 12,500-ton detector’s different layers (weighing, according to CERN, as much as 30 jumbo jets or 2,500 African elephants) stop and measure the different particles, and use this data to form a picture of events at the heart of the collision. Scientists plan to use the info to help answer questions about what the universe is really made of and what forces act within it.

On Wednesday, as the LHC was revving up, CMS engineers searched computers for half a dozen files uploaded by the hackers. The interlopers accessed the computer that monitors the CMS software system as the CMS collects data during particle collisions.

CERN scientists says no harm was done but that the break-in raises security concerns, given that intruders were able to penetrate so close to the CMS’s computer control system, according to the Telegraph.co.uk. In other words, the hackers came this close to being able to switch off some CMS controls.