Well, we're luckier than we thought...

[I quote the entire mail from Dave Farber's Interesting People list.]

This is just Strangelovesque....

What was the password which controlled the firing of America's ICBMs for years during the height of the Cold War?

00000000

That's right. For *all* of them. The Permissive Action Link codes for all of Americas missiles provided less protection than on an average suitcase.

[It's fair to note that there were a lot of other controls, such
as the dual key system. However, it appears that a pair of
rogue controllers could have unleashed Armmagedon - pt]

The entire article that the email pointed out can be found at http://www.cdi.org/blair/permissive-action-links.cfm, and it's quite the doozy.

There are always ways around every well-meant system, and it's probably something we ought to keep in mind. It's a definite problem in computer security today -- how do we keep the hackers out? And a lot of the time, it turns out, no matter how secure the computer is, there are always ways, and most of those ways have to do with people.

People, you see, do silly and strange things. One of the easiest ways into a secure system has to do with a concept called social engineering, in which you cause somebody who knows a secret to believe you're authorized to tell the secret as well.

In this case, it wasn't quite social engineering, but it was SAC making a strategic decision to make nuclear weapons easier to launch despite the consequences. And that ought to give you pause.

Posted by katster at June 1, 2004 09:12 AM

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