Hacker Shows Holes in US Defense

LONDON (Reuters)

Read that news bulletin. Read every word of it. I'll summarize in a moment, but don't rely on my summary. Don't ever rely on any summary. Don't trust what Moses said; get it from God. (And don't trust God either: who know what he's hiding.) Get the raw evidence.

English hacker sees War Games. (I saw that movie with bk, himself a hacker.) Kid hacks into the Pentagon. His hack winds up saving the world from the berserk computer. Now this contemporary hacker goes looking for UFOs, government cover-ups: a truth seeker, a weird pervert of a truth seeker: just what we could use a few more of.

But shame on us if this is news to any of us. Richard Feynman, genius extraordinaire, computer for the Manhattan Project, found US security to be as much hole as wall and told us all about it in the years following WW II. Did we listen? Of course not. No, we're too busy being the big cheese to imagine that what was wrong with Rome applies to us.

Richard Feynman, math whizz, funny-man, had full clearance throughout the military: it was his secrets we were keeping after all. Being involved in security, he started studying security: Houdini, safes, lock picking ...

The Pentagon spent top dollar on the best safes: then never bothered to read or follow the instructions that came with the safe. Feynman went around the Pentagon trying the default combination on unattended (!) safes. Most opened to the factory installed combination! If they didn't, he tried variants of the safe's assignee's birthday. Bingo, again and again. Or he dialed in π, or e ... The Pentagon officials were no better than ordinary citizens at their own security. Where unusual combinations were used, the combination was written out on the desk, where any spy could find it in a minute.

Feynman studied the safes. He discovered that the combination could be de-cyphered by looking at the tumblers. The tumblers were visible only when the door was open. Thus, the safe, with a secure combination added by the user, kept with its doors closed, was safe: worth the investment. But Pentagon offices kept the safe doors wide open, from 9 to 5! Any spy could learn the safe's combination simply by walking by. Feynman wrote memos to all concerned. What happened? The secretaries still kept the safe doors open, but if they saw Feynman coming, they would close the door; not the safe door, the office door! So Feynman wouldn't catch them giving the store away. The spies could read the secrets, but the watch dog wouldn't see.

Now this English nerd follows a movie! buys off-the-shelf software, a cheap hacker's guide ... and waltzes right into the Pentagon, NASA ... Instead of saying Thank you, Mr. Feynman, thank you Houdini, thank you, Mr. Whistle ... we want to crucify him, eat his gristle.

god gives us the materials to live, and the materials to snuff ourselves. We live. Then we get rich, powerful, lazy, drunk, stoned. We pass out, with our pants down, our jewels exposed. Why should anyone care what happens to us?