I have just one thought about this kerfuffle over British hacker Gary McKinnon finding his way into some (supposedly) ultra-secure US Government systems… don’t put the guy in jail. Instead the US Government should fly him over the pond first class and grill him on how he did it. That way they can learn about how to make the systems more secure. And then they should give him a job working in the UFO lab that we saw in Independence Day.
Of course, regular watchers of 1980s movies will already know how easy hacking is. Watching Beverly Hills Cop II we learn that even in the late 80s you could have accessed any computer from any other computer, as Eddie Murphy demonstrates when he pops into Gilbert Gottfried’s office and accesses the Police HQ system. In Weird Science we learn that to hack into a secure government system all you had to do was type in ‘override’. Unfortunately that doesn’t work any more as security experts removed all override back-doors after the movie was released on VHS. The new back-door is ‘pa55w0rd’ – this is what McKinnon used, but if the US Government interview him and discover this, they’ll change it to something like ‘l4tme1n’.
l4tme1n
🙂
As you (we) proved, it is very easy to gain access to a lot of “secure” systems. Domino systems are no less susceptible than anything else.
You may have said it in jest, but I think they’re just trying to find a scapegoat because they CBA to fix their own screw ups.
I said it all in jest, I have no serious opinions on the matter… other than that Beverly Hills Cop II was better than III.
Best hacker movie ever was “War Games” starring a very fresh faced Matthew Broderick.
Some kid in his bedroom dialing random numbers and gets into the US defense system and almost sets off WW3.
totally ludicrous but probably based on a true story.
Ah, the good old days of modems and black and green monitors ;o)
On a slightly different note, Zoe and I were in Orlando yesterday and popped into the Apple store. The new 27″ iMac is spectacular, if a little on the large side for most home offices.