this post was submitted on 17 Aug 2024
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I watched it two days ago, that's tragicomic.
I know, right? Like how the hell do you get worried from such a silly movie.. Unless he knew the us military defense systems were in fact that weak, against people and their telephones.
Nah, Reagan was just a wuss.
Of all the things that happen in the movie, the thought that someone will have hooked a top-secret defense computer up to a modem is the one that is the absolute most believable.
Like, it's entirely going to have happened at some point.
I kind of expect it to be required, SCADA has had plenty of ancestry. But you'd expect the NSA to have been consulted on how to prevent interaction with the general public..
I love Star Wars EU mostly for correctly showing how societies work in such regards.
When something happens there (unconnected to ancient magic), it usually involves a few pretty mundane snafus, and even if descriptions used make tech people and engineers cringe, the general situation just makes sense.
TCW and Disney era, on the other hand - ugh.
for several years in the early 00's, the process for getting security clearance involved no background check, just knowing who to ask. they literally rubber stamped it.
getting a fed job or something still did, but just security clearance, on its own, for anyone? just ask. not even nicely.
I did a security clearance interview for someone a while ago, and the agent they sent was very polite and the whole conversation ended up being about if my friend pirated media.
I was very confused and had no idea what his media acquisition methods were, and no idea why that was literally the only thing I was asked during the interview.
it WAS dealt with pretty quick, but yeah I bet it's still pretty absurd, even if they at least ask... some questions?
The story goes that, after watching the film, Reagan asked the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff ”Could something like this really happen? Could someone break into our most sensitive computers?”, and, after looking into it for a week, the general came back with the reply “Mr. president, the problem is much worse than you think.”, which prompted Reagan into setting off a series of interagency memos and studies that led to the signing of classified national security decision directive NSDD-145, “National Policy on Telecommunications and Automated Information Systems Security.”.
So... yeah, things probably actually were that bad, or even worse (except for the AI bit, of course).
Has there ever, once, been an infosec issue that doesn't result in an investigation and someone then going 'oh my god, this is worse than anyone could have imagined'?
Teaching rocks to do math was a terrible, terrible idea.
If it wasn't an infosec issue (because no math rocks), it would be an opsec or comsec issue. We're the weak link unfortunately.
also, just imagine the threat was that defense systems could be invaded by your average citizen.
Let's put resources to making them secure then, right? Nah, let's just make it illegal to guess passwords. That will surely prevent bad things from happening.
basic state logic.
they're incapable of sucking less. their whole episteme is about centralizing, about reducing thought the farther it gets from the central authority (whether that's one guy, a class, or a building like the pentagon), but you CAN increase violence, threaten, flatten, disable, basically wherever.
That's how I feel about it as well. Better to upgrade the safe than to add warning posters.
The nuclear codes for decades was 00000000. That's all you needed to launch nukes.
Our cyber security was atrocious
At least now it's 00000000!123
Maybe it's my ADHD, but I actually feel much better (very light and easy) reading such things. Nukes with zero launch codes, laws being made after watching movies for teens, Soviet caliber differences intended to make Soviet ammunition just a bit too large to be usable by the potential enemy, BTR-1 being basically a transport so that infantry wouldn't die while traversing nuked land, thus with no real protection against anything, and so on.
I mean, nuking another country by mistake is better than not nuking it when necessarily, or so someone judged. But some other people wanted some protection against fools, so theoretically they had that.