WEBVTT
Kind: captions
Language: en

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Let me tell you a Christmas story.

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Or, rather a Christma story, because this
is from the days when computer file names

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were limited to eight characters.

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It's December 1987.

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Ronald Reagan was US President; Margaret Thatcher
was British Prime Minister.

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And home computers were sort of a thing, just,

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although for the few people that had them
they weren't really connected up to any other

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machines.

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We were still two years away from the World
Wide Web even being invented.

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And in a small university in Germany,

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a student was writing one of the first major
computer worms.

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It was called "CHRISTMA".

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Simple program, it only ran on one type of
old, text- well,

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now-old, text-based computer.

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Back then, it was state of the art.

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It just displayed a little text art of a Christmas
tree.

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But while the user was looking at that,

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it ran through the 1987 equivalent of their
computer's address book and emailed itself

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to everyone in it.

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"Let this exec run," it said -- exec being
executable file,

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a program you start -- "and enjoy yourself".

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Well, by modern standards of ransomware and
identity theft,

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that is a pretty innocent virus,

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although it replicated so well and convinced
so many people to open it

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that it took down one of IBM's networks for
a couple of days

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-- and that was back when IBM was still a
force to be reckoned with.

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Actually, it took it down twice,

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it resurfaced three years later when, presumably,

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someone forgot what it was while they were
rooting through their files and opened --

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"ah, there's that lovely little Christmas
card again".

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Which brings us to a question.

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That kind of attack is still sort of possible
now, on modern hardware.

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Not the same program, but that's how a lot
of malware still spreads:

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you convince the user to download something
and run it,

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and it gets access to everything on the user's
PC --

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internet access, webcam, personal documents,
everything.

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Email isn't not a good vector for spreading
stuff like that any more,

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but web sites offering pirated stuff do the
job just as well.

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And yes, there are other routes,

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there are zero-day attacks on Flash -- actually,

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a lot of zero-day attacks on Flash, actually,

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it's pretty much all zero-day attacks on Flash
right now.

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Zero-day meaning there is no warning given,

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zero days from the exploit going out and infecting
people,

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and Adobe trying to patch Flash, again --

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anyway, there are other routes.

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But ultimately, if you tell a user, hey,

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free music, free pirated software,

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free Christmas wallpaper for your PC, whatever
you want,

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you get them to download something and run
it -- and it is game over.

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And there are some mitigations these days.

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Windows has User Account Control and built-in
antivirus,

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and Mac and Linux have administrator accounts
and permission management,

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but if the malware is trying to do something
to the important parts of the system,

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it'll get stopped, as long as the user doesn't
just click the OK box

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or type in their password, and let's be honest,

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that happens more often than it should.

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But even without getting that permission,

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even if the virus that you've downloaded is
just able to use your user account and your

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files:

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it can still do a lot of damage,

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it can still encrypt all the files in your
personal directory,

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all your photos and your business invoices,

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and lock them away until you send Bitcoin
to some anonymous person far away.

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To the computer that's naively running a program,

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there is no difference between a virus doing
damage,

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and the user deliberately running something
to take those same actions.

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You can't create a filter for malicious behaviour
like that

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without having a near-perfect model of what
the user's thinking

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and what they might actually want to do.

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There are times when, genuinely,

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you want to delete everything on your computer.

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There is another option, though.

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And we use it all the time.

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On an iPhone, for example, each app has its
own separate area for storing documents.

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There's not one central space that all apps
can access at the same time.

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Imagine if desktop computers were built that
way:

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all the reports or homework that you've written
in Microsoft Word

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are only accessible under Microsoft Word,
locked down.

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And if you want to email a report to someone,

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or convert it to a different program,

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you don't go -- if you want to attach the
file to an email program,

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you don't go to the email program,

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click "Attach" and run through your central
Documents store -- you open Word,

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and you tell it to push that one file to the
email program.

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All your music would be accessible only in
the player you downloaded it in,

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until you pushed it to somewhere else.

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And right now, all the techie people watching
this, all of you,

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you're out there and you're going,

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"oh that'd be terrible, that's an awful thing,

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it'd mean we wouldn't be free to use our computers
the way we want,

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how am I supposed to chain these three different
programs together

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to do this obscure thing that I need to do?"

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And I get that.

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I really do.

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I enthusiastically endorse that kind of bodging.

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And for anyone who's delving deep into their
system, who knows their way around,

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that kind of advanced mode is necessary.

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But why didn't we build those systems,

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the ones for non-techies, differently?

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Because we never had the chance.

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The desktop computers that we have today are
descendants of those old systems from 1987.

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There wasn't the storage space or processing
time back then to try and give every application

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its own little silo and manage it separately
-- besides,

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in a lot of cases the programs were just writing
ones and zeros.

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Computers were for academic use, for professionals,

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so it was Proper Expensive Equipment that
had to be treated with care.

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But for today's regular user, for the people
who get hit by ransomware

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and who do lose all their family photos: I'm
not sure that system works.

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Do regular computer users really need to see
the "C drive" or "Macintosh HD"?

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Should they need to worry about folders and
files and backups?

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We've got that design because of backwards
compatibility,

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because for desktop computers we've never
been able to have a clean break.

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Even Apple, who said that their users move
with the times,

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they give a couple of years of grace to stay
updated -- and, hell,

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Windows will still happily most programs from
literally twenty years ago.

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There's never been the option to start fresh.

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If they ever stopped using that metaphor of
folders and files all in one central location

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-- and it's been promised, from time to time
--

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all those old programs will stop working.

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But for all-new devices that we've only had
for the last few years?

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For tablets, and phones, and Chromebooks,

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with their locked-down operating systems?
Behind the scenes, sure,

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they still use that folders and files system,

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but it's not visible to the end user.

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As those devices become more and more popular,

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and the PC's market share starts to decline,
at least for home use:

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perhaps we will finally be able to leave that
old system behind,

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and computer security will get a little bit
better.

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Except.

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One of the reasons that Britain has such a
strong tech industry now

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is the home computer boom of the 1980s,

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when the BBC Micro and the ZX Spectrum made
a generation who could code.

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We're seeing governments push and push to
make sure that kids are computer literate,

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that they know that they can write the future
as well as read it.

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And as much as locking down computers and
systems might makes the world more secure:

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you can't write iPhone apps on an iPhone.

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And someone has to write the iPhone apps.

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So whether you're hoping for a new laptop
with its files and folders,

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or a new phone with its separate data silos,

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or maybe something a little less technological
under your tree:

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merry Christmas to you.

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And whether it's digital or physical,

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whether you're writing code, or painting art,

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or just building a snowman:

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here's to whatever you're making next,

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and I'll see you in 2016.

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