“Are we there yet?” Actually kids this journey would take longer in a rocket.

 

BORED with driving to visit the relatives this weekend? You won’t be alone with more than 11 million hitting the road 0ver Easter – and 50 per cent of them leaving today.

Astonishingly, many of those crisscrossing the UK will actually travel further than the distance needed to visit to Major Tim Peake on the International Space Station.

A trip to Bude in Cornwall from London is 252 miles, while London to Whitby in North Yorkshire is 258 miles – both further than the 248 miles (400km) height at which the space station orbits.

Yet for those already bristling at the constant delays, inevitable road works and the grim fare offered by the nation’s motorway services – it may be of some cheer to let your passengers know it takes longer to cover the same distance in a rocket.

That isn’t because the Soyuz crew stop for a soggy panini in the mesosphere, or to account for avoiding  the 2,271 satellites and half a million jagged pieces of space junk circling the earth.

Simply, while it took only nine minutes for Major Tim’s Soyuz rocket to arrive in orbit – the astronauts then have to spend another six hours on the earth’s ‘ring road’ as they synchronise their path and speed to dock perfectly with the ISS as its whizzes around the planet at 17,000 mph. (In Tim’s case it actually took 11 minutes longer because the automatic docking system failed and they had to do it manually)

Hard-pressed drivers may even feel a twinge of extra sympathy because, aside from wearily tracking those extra hours around the Earth Orbital, the final ‘are we there yet’ moment for travelling astronauts is that once they’ve eventually docked they still have to wait another two hours before the hatch is opened while all the final compression checks are run – which has to be up there with Dad forgetting the door keys for upping the frustration levels. That makes a total of eight hours and 11 minutes from lift-off to door.

Suffice to say children, for all those encaged on the M1, M6, or A303 or M25, it would take you longer if you were in a space suit – and you definitely wouldn’t get to stop for those Haribo Tangfastics.

One other small thing to consider – just in case you choose to convert to the rocket-powered flying car this Easter. Don’t set off in a hurry. The next closest time the space station will be to the UK is 3:16am tomorrow (Friday) morning.

 

 

 

 

 

Outsmarted by our own smart meters?

Great piece from FT’s Pilita Clark and Sam Jones crediting my interview with GCHQ’s Dr Ian Levy in new TalkTalk/Freud’s Cybercrime Journal.

 

GCHQ steps in to foil smart-meter hackers

 

GCHQ has intervened in the design of an £11bn nationwide system of smart energy meters to secure them against attempts by hackers to crash the country’s power grids.

The agency built in additional security measures for the UK metering system after discovering loopholes in meter designs in use abroad that it believed could pose a national security risk if rolled out in Britain.

The communication channel between each meter and the utilities operating them was designed to be encrypted. But the encryption key, the code used to unscramble the data each meter sends and receives, was the same for all of them.

If a hacker was able to crack the key, they could potentially gain control of every meter, GCHQ feared, according to a senior Whitehall official. That would allow them to “start blowing things up”, the official said.

Ian Levy, the technical director of GCHQ’s communications electronic security group, said in a separate interview that a number of security challenges surrounded the millions of gas and electricity smart meters being installed.

“The issue is will they let someone disconnect all the power to your house? Or can someone turn off the right number of meters in the right way to cause a collapse in the grid’s systems?” he told a cyber crime industry journal published by Freud Communications, the public relations group. “I’m not talking about small outages here, because frankly you could take out the supply cabinets of 100 houses with just a hammer.”

GCHQ is helping the Department of Energy and Climate Change securely design the new metering system, one of the UK’s biggest IT projects in a generation. Energy companies have already installed about 2m of the 53m smart meters due to be rolled out in homes and small businesses across the country by 2020.

Each one lets people see their power or gas use in real time, ending the need for meter-reader visits and estimated bills, and allowing consumers to save energy at certain times of day.

This should lead to savings of about £26 on the average dual fuel household bill by 2020, the energy department estimates, and cut millions of tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions.

The meters are to be hooked up to a custom-made data network linking the devices with energy utilities, due to go live in August. That should help cut the time it takes to switch energy suppliers from six weeks to as little as 24 hours, says Smart Energy GB, a campaign group for the smart meter rollout.

But Mr Levy says there have been big challenges ensuring all the different components of the new system are secure.

“The guys making the meters are really good at making the meters, but they might not know a lot about making them secure. The guys making headend systems know a lot about making them secure, but not about what vulnerabilities might be built into them,” he said.

To guard against these risks, the system has been designed in a way that means it can remain secure overall even if parts of it are compromised by a cyber attack, he added.

“The resilience is gained by needing three independent exploits or failures to happen to cause any large-scale effect.”

The National Grid said the IT systems used to operate gas and electricity networks were isolated from everyday business systems and built to ensure the networks remained safe and reliable.

‘The guys making the meters are really good but they might not know a lot about making them secure’

END

“Are you ready for me? Come on. It’s up to you”

New footage shows President Obama barge into meeting of world leaders to ensure face-to-face talks with Chinese Premier.

BECOMING President opens many doors – but inevitably it’s the ones that are still shut to you that are the most interesting – especially if the man who least wants to speak is the Chinese Premier.

New BBC documentary series ‘Inside The White House’ dramatically encapsulates that moment after the US President was snubbed by the leader of his rival world power in climate talks.

In previously unseen footage, President Barack Obama tracks down the Chinese leader Wen Jiabao who has been avoiding face-to-face talks, instead setting up a hush-hush meeting with developing nations India, South Africa and Brazil.

Ignoring protocol, President Obama stalks the corridors of the Danish convention centre to gatecrash the meeting as he pushes for a last minute world climate deal during tense negotiations on the final day of a major summit in Copenhagen in 2009.

Amazing moment Obama confronts Chinese Premier

In an unprecedented move the President elbows his way past crowds of officials to confront the four other world leaders in a cramped office.

To astonished looks, he demands: “Are you ready for me or you guys need to talk some more? It’s up to you. Come on. What do you think?  Premier are you ready for me or do you want to wait?”

After a pause, which still gives international diplomats palpitations to this day, the President is finally waved in and he and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton are allowed to grab a chair and join the meeting in a crowded side room with just hours before the talks break up.

Already around the table are India’s Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Brazil’s President Lula and South Africa’s President Zuma and the Chinese Premier.

President Obama had become impatient believing the  Chinese leader was avoiding him, after the Chinese only sent Vice Foreign Minister He Yafei to a crucial meeting of 25 world leaders trying to cobble together a last minute climate deal at the Danish conference.

That meeting had quickly turned to stalemate with China and India refusing to accept carbon targets before it was finally being adjourned by the embarrassed Chinese official, who called for a suspension of “only a few minutes.”  But it never resumed and as time dragged on and talks failed to restart, the President instead sought to arrange to meet the Chinese Premier in person, only to be told Premier Jiabao was already on the way to the airport.

However minutes later US staff reported the Chinese delegation had instead been sighted meeting with other nations in separate part of the convention centre.

Instead the president and his retinue marched to the small glass office, where Obama politely demands an audience with the Chinese leader.

Jeff Bader, Obama’s China adviser, told noted documentary maker Norma Percy from makers Brook Lapping: “President Wen Jaibao forced a big smile and signalled: ‘Here have a seat…”

“President Obama told him: ‘I have other things to do. I don’t have to be here. If you are all not interested in having an agreement. Fine, but I think it would be worth a bit of your time.’

“Wen Jiabao pretty clearly signalled he wanted to get the thing to a positive outcome,” Mr Bader added.

US negotiator Michale Froman said: “At the end of the day there was one final issue to be resolved and the President said: ‘Will you confirm that China will list in the annexe the actions it intends to take. We waited for the translations to go through. Premier Wen said ‘Yes’ and at that point there was an explosion of yelling in the room on the Chinese side, in Mandarin, and lots of back and forth among the Chinese officials.

“We all looked at the interpreter with anticipation and the interpreter said: ‘Internal discussion only’ – and at that point we knew we had achieved something quite meanful.

The agreement finally resulted in a disappointing, non binding political accord after the showdown on December 18, 2009.

However President Obama told the Brook Lapping documentary team in an exclusive interview for the series: “Although it was perceived as a failure that actually planted the seed for subsequent success.” A wide-ranging agreement was later made between President Obama and later Chinese leader Xi Jinping in November, 2014

Watch: Inside Obama’s White House. BBC2 Tuesday 9pm.