2018年可锐考研英语优秀阅读文章赏析

2018年可锐考研英语优秀阅读文章赏析（五）Businesses and cyber-security
商业活动与网络安全
A spook speaks.
鬼魅之声。

Its cost may be hard to count, but cybercrime hascompanies worried.
网络犯罪损失难料，公司企业忧心忡忡。

LIKE blooms on a peculiar plant, speeches by thehead of the British security service are rare; andwhen they do appear, they draw attention. On June 25th Jonathan Evans, the director-general of MI5, burst into oratorical flower for the first time in 21 months. After commentingon preparations for the Olympic Games and on counter-terrorism, Mr Evans turned to cyber-security-where the front line…is as much in business as it is in government. States as wellas criminals were up to no good, he said: in particular, a major London listed company withwhich we have worked had lost revenue of some ￡800m to state-sponsoredcyber-attack. The firm in question had lost intellectual property and had been put at adisadvantage in commercial negotiations.
英国安全局的发言就如铁树开花一般罕见，而一旦他们发话了，便立即吸引众人目光。

6月25日，军情五处的总干事Jonathan Evans在沉默了21个月后首次发表演讲。

他先评价了奥运会准备工作和反恐的问题，接着便把话题转移到网络安全上——在前线……企业和政府的遭遇没什么区别。

他说，国家和个人罪犯都不怀好意，尤其是国家给予经济支持的网络攻击，使得部分受我们保护的主要伦敦上市企业盈利损失近达8亿英镑。

遭受攻击的企业失去了知识产权，还会在商务谈判中处于劣势。

Examples and rumours abound of companies being burgled by cyberfrauds, cyberspooks orcyber-mischief-makers. On June 26th America s Federal Trade Commission sued WyndhamWorldwide, a hotel group, alleging that security failures at the company in 2008 and 2009had led to the export of hundreds of thousands of guests payment-card account numbers toa domain registered in Russia. The FTC says millions of dollars were lost to fraud.Wyndham says it knows of no customers who lost money and that the FTC s claims are without merit .
关于公司企业遭受网络诈骗、网络幽灵或者网络恶作剧绑架的例子和传闻遍地开花。

6月26日，美国联邦贸易委员会控告温德姆环球酒店公司，控诉其因安全疏忽致使08至09年客户的信用卡账号信息泄露，流入了一个在俄罗斯注册的域名。

联邦贸易委员会称因受诈骗，数百万美元的资金遭受损失，而温德姆酒店方面则没有客户受害，联邦委员会的说法毫无根据。

The loss of industrial secrets is perhaps even more worrying to companies than that of theircustomers credit-card data. Some think worry is overdue. Mark Anderson, the chairman ofINVNT/IP, a new organisation of technology companies, says: We are encouraged bydiscovering the number of global technology CEOs who have come to understand thisissue and its importance to their own company welfare, regardless of the incentives andprotestations offered by China, Russia and other nations known to actively steal IP.
恐怕对于企业来说，更可怕的是泄露商业机密而不是顾客信用卡数据被窃取，有些人认为现在才开始担心来得太迟。

INVNT/IP是一家新成立的技术公司，他的总裁Mark Anderson 说：中国、俄罗斯和其他猖狂进行IP偷窃的国家如今一味发表声明以正其身，尽管如此，我们仍然备受鼓舞，因为我们发现世界上越来越多技术公司总裁意识到网络安全的问题及其对他们公司资产的重要性。

Working out the cost of cybercrime is a devil of a job. The FTC and Wyndham are poles aparton their estimates of the effect of the credit-card thefts. Companies say they are underconstant cyber-attack in ever more ingenious forms, but they are loth to say in public howoften the raiders get through and how much damage they do—assuming that the breach isspotted. That suggests the damage is underreported. When they are speaking to thesecurity services they may be more forthcoming, but will they be accurate? Companiesmight anyway have lost some of the business written off to cybercrime. In that case, MrEvans s ￡800m would be on the high side.
核算网络犯罪带来的成本损失让人避之若浼，联邦贸易委员会和温德姆酒店集团对信用卡盗窃的影响预估大相径庭。

公司企业声称他们经常受到网络攻击，其形式更甚高明，但他们却不愿意公布，如果他们的漏洞被盯上的话，他们受入侵的次数以及受损程度会是多少，估计损失也被低估。

他们可能会向安全局透露更多，但在这过程中他们会给出准确信息吗?企业的部分业务收入可能也与网络犯罪的损失勾销。

在之前提到的事例中，Evan先生的8亿美金就算偏高了。

In a report by Britain s Cabinet Office last year, Detica, the software arm of BAE Systems, adefence company, put the cost of cybercrime to the country at a staggering ￡27 billion, or1.8% of GDP. Businesses bore ￡21 billion, mostly because of the theft of secrets andindustrial espionage. Lots of people doubted these numbers-including, it seems, the Ministryof Defence, which commissioned a study from a team led by Ross Anderson, a computer-security expert at Cambridge University.
据英国内阁办公厅去年的报告显示，主理防卫业务的英国BAE系统公司的附属公司Detica给其提供软件助理，Detica在去年投入到英国国内的网络犯罪防范成本惊人，达到270亿英镑，占了GDP的1.8%。

他们的业务收入达到210亿英镑，大部分涉及偷取商业机密和行业间谍活动。

包括国防部在内的许多人都质疑这份数据，国防部还特此委任了剑桥大学计算机安全专家Ross Anderson组织团队开展研究。

The team s report, published this month, shies away from adding up totals, preferring toassess the costs of different types of crime in turn, but comes up with much lower
figures-partly because it discounts Detica s numbers for intellectual-property theft and espionageentirely, saying they have no obvious foundation . Most of the cost of cybercrime, itconcludes, is indirect, such as spending on antivirus software or other corporate defences.In other words, a lot goes on payments by one lot of businesses to another: the computer-security industry.
该团队于本月发布了报告，报告避而不谈损失总量，却反过来评估各种网络犯罪造成的不同损失，但是其估算出来的数据远远偏低——部分原因是他们完全不重视Detica关于知识产权窃取和商业间谍活动的数据，声称他们没有明显基础。

该报告总结，大部分针对网络犯罪的成本损失都是间接的，比如说杀毒软件或其他公司防卫手段的支出。

换句话说，大部分花费支付给了另一类行业：计算机安全保障行业。

That may be inevitable. Cyber-attacks are happening more often and are becoming moreprecisely targeted. Greg Day, the chief technology officer for security in the Europeanbusiness of Symantec, a computer-security firm, says that for years cybercrime was moreor less random , as crooks looked for any holes they could find anywhere. In the pastcouple of years, however, they have chosen their corporate targets more precisely.Symantec observed virtually no targeted attacks before Stuxnet, a worm that attackedindustrial-control systems, appeared in 2010. Last December it spotted an average of 154 aday.
这是不可避免的，网络攻击越来越频繁，目标越来越精确。

计算机安全公司赛门铁克的欧洲分公司技术总监Greg Day说，过去的网络犯罪多多少少有点随机性，不法分子只是在到处找寻他们可以突破的漏洞而已。

然而，在最近几年，他们更加有的放矢。

据赛门铁克观察发现，2010年之前，没有任何网络受到过针对性攻击，后来，旨在攻击企业控制系统的蠕虫病毒Stuxnet出现了，这种情况就改变了，去年12月，每天就有154个系统受到这种病毒的攻击。

The bad guys are increasingly using social media to try to find a way in, either by gatheringintelligence or by befriending employees who may be tricked into opening an e-mail withnasty code within. People, a security-industry adage runs, are the weakest link. Trainingthem to be careful may still be the best defence.
越来越多坏蛋利用社交媒体进行黑客攻击活动，他们要么成群结队地展开活动，要么找易上当的雇员下手，欺骗他们打开含有恶意代码的电子邮件。

正如安保行业的格言所说，人们是最脆弱的环节。

因此，训练人们警惕小心可能仍是最好的防卫手段。

二．
A shiny new telescope is crowding out NASA s other science missions
一个引人瞩目的望远镜把其他科研项目挤出NASA的预算
THE Hubble space telescope, an orbiting observatory launched in 1990 by NASA, America
sspace agency, has been one of that agency s most successful missions since the Apollo moonshots in the 1960s and 1970s. It has produced a string of scientific achievements: confirmingthat most galaxies have a black hole in the middle; providing a front-row seat for thecollision, in 1994, of a comet with the planet Jupiter; and helping to uncover the strangefact that the expansion of the universe seems to be accelerating. But beyond the science,it has also been a public-relations hit. Its beautiful images have introduced a generation tothe wonders of astronomy.
哈勃望远镜是于1990年由美国航空航天局发射的一个轨道运行天文台。

它已成为美国航空局自20世纪6、70年代阿波罗号发射后最重大的成就之一。

它也产生了一系列科学成果：证实了大多数星系中间都有一个黑洞;为1994年彗星和木星碰撞的观测提供最清晰的视角;有助于发现宇宙趋于加速膨胀的奇特现象。

在科学领域之外，它也同样是一个公众讨论的热点。

哈勃望远镜所提供的美妙图片已经将一代又一代人引入天文学奇观中去。

So in 2002, when the agency considered plans for a successor that would study the universein infra-red, rather than visible light, would be ready to fly in 2010 and would cost just $2.5billion, saying yes was easy. Nine years later, NASA is regretting that decision. The JamesWebb space telescope , as the new machine is called, is still in the workshop, and itslaunch date has been set back repeatedly . Its cost hasgone up to $8.8 billion, a figure that, if history is any guide, could rise still further. Whichwould be embarrassing at the best of times, but with public-spending cuts looming andNASA s budget flat for the foreseeable future, it is causing real strains.
所以在2002年，代理机构考虑一个将用红外线代替可见光研究宇宙的继任者的计划。

这个继任者计划在2010年起飞，而且只花25亿美元，因此当时很容易就通过了。

但是9年以后，NASA真的很后悔当初的决定。

这台名为JWST的新机器仍然还在工作间，并且它的发射日期一再被推演，按照以往的经验推测，这笔预算还会继续增加。

在这最佳时期将会是尴尬的。

但是随着公共花费削减正隐隐约约呈现并且对NASA未来的预期并不景气，它正造成真的担忧。

In July, irritated by the JWST s rising costs, the House of Representatives tried to cut $1.9billion from NASA s budget for next year, in an attempt to have the project cancelled. OnNovember 1st, after lobbying from the telescope s defenders , the Senate passed a bill that restored the telescope s funding.
7月，受到JWST不断上升的花费的影响，美国众议院试图从NASA下半年的预算中减少19亿美元，让这个项目取消。

在9月1日，在望远镜保护人的游说下，众议院通过了恢复望远镜基金的议案。

But it is not just politicians that are restive. Astronomers have long worried that theballooning costs of the telescope would affect NASA s other science projects. Officially, thespace agency will say only that other missions will be delayed, but there are fears that somecould be cut completely. One potential sacrifice is WFIRST, an infra-red space telescopeintended for launch in 2020. This is designed to probe the nature of dark energy , which
isthought to be responsible for the quickening expansion of the universe that Hubble helpedbring to the world s attention. A string of other, smaller projects could suffer as well.
但是焦躁不安的不仅仅是政治家，天文学家也一直担心不断增加德望远镜开支会影响美国航空航天局其他科研项目。

尽管航天局发布消息说其他项目将仅仅被推迟，但是仍然存在一些项目被完全终止的可怕结果。

其中最有可能被牺牲的项目是计划在2020年推出的红外线太红望远镜。

该望远镜为了探究宇宙暗能量的本质而设计，而暗能量被认为是加快宇宙膨胀的主要原因。

哈勃望远镜在探究暗能量中的作用引起了世界的关注。

接下来一系列的其他小项目也将遇到相同的困境。

The telescope s advocates say junking it now would be a false economy. Most of the hardwarehas already been built, so cancelling it, they argue, would mean throwing all that away. Andthey play on fears that America is in danger of losing its pre-eminence in high-budget bigscience , following the closure earlier this year of the Illinois-based Tevatron, the second-most-powerful particle accelerator in the world.
望远镜的拥护者认为现在放弃它也是假省钱。

大多数的硬件已经开发完成，因此，他们认为取消他它将意味着前功尽弃。

随着今年早些时候，世界上第二给力的粒子加速器，伊利诺斯州的一万亿电子伏加速器的关闭，他们担忧美国正面临着失去它在以高预算为支撑的尖端科技领域领先地位的威胁。

The JWST, if it does eventually fly, would surely do some spectacular science. The size ofits mirror-25 square metres, as against Hubble s 4.5—and the location of its orbit far from thereflected light of Earth will allow it to study some of the earliest events in the universe, including the formation of the first galaxies. It will also help with thesearch for extrasolar planets.
如果JWST最后可以升空的话，将要成为科学界的壮举。

它的反射镜有25平米——远远超过了哈勃4.5平米的面积——而且它的运行轨道离地球的反射光更远，可以让人们看清早期宇宙发生的事情，包括第一个星系的形成。

它也能对寻找太阳系外的行星提供帮助。

Hubble, of course, was also late-and around $2 billion over budget. It was lampooned afterits launch when a wonky mirror meant that its images were blurred almost to the point ofuselessness, and a mission by the Space Shuttle to fix the problem cost hundreds of millionsof dollars. Given its subsequent record, few now begrudge the cost. With all that in mind,NASA will press on with the JWST, at least for now. All that remains for America sastronomers to do is pray that their favourite mission is not one of those delayed, or evencancelled, to keep the new telescope on track.
当然，哈勃望远镜也是出现较晚的，并且超出预算达20亿美元。

在它发射之后因为一个镜片晃动造成像模糊而被讽刺是毫无用处的，并且一个用航天飞机来完成这样一个修理任务要花费上亿美元，但是据它随后传回的数据来看，很少有人会吝啬这笔钱。

鉴于这一切，就目前而言，美国航空航天局会对JWST的研发施压。

对于美国航天员来说，他们所能做的就是祈祷他们热衷的任务没有被拖延或者取消将来让望远镜走上正轨。