Least Privilege

So, apparently the Conficker worm has been found infecting medical devices on hospitals. It has been found on imaging devices, like MRIs, that were connected to the internet. The funny thing is that, upon inquiring the operators of these machines, they conceded that these machines had no need to be connected to the internet. The my question is... why the fuck were they connected then?! Whatever happened to the principle of least privilege?

The world's network infrastructure and computer systems are not vulnerable just because of software flaws. In fact, software flaws are the easy part to deal with, because they can be fixed. But how do you fix people's stupidity? We could certainly try putting a sign on people identifying their stupidity, but with risk of some moron screwing up the labeling, who knows what the consequences would be :-)

It seems that common sense is not so common after all, and these criminals know really well how to exploit that fact. God forbid what would happen if these guys get control of an X-ray machine, and decides to start playing with it...

Maybe this will be a wake up call, but I doubt it.

Hey, I have an even better idea! Why don't we connect the world's nuclear arsenal to the internet? Wouldn't that be awesome?