Slashdot Mirror
Crack a Password, Save Norwegian History
Christian writes "With the death of the only person who knew the password to an archive held at a museum in Norway, suddenly the data became inaccessible. The result? A nationwide radio appeal asking for "hackers" to volunteer to help solve the problem! The
Norway Post has the story." I wonder if they looked under his keyboard yet..
5. Juni 2002
Hackers respond to password challenge
Hackers have responded in large numbers to an appeal from the director of a culture center and literary museum on the west coast of Norway.
The password to one of their library archive systems is missing.
The museum built in honour of the famous Norwegian linguist Ivar Aasen received a gift of more than 1600 books and documents which had been catalogued and registered in a national data bank, which researchers and interested people may access.
Only trouble was that the expert who had helped the donor with the archiving work had died, and had failed to pass on the password.
In order to get access to the data base, Director Ottar Grepstad appealed on nationwide radio for help to solve the problem.
The response was above expectations, and the director is now busy chosing the expert most likely to solve the problem.
(NRK)
(this loaded very slow, but I got it.)
The truth shall set you free!
I've already cracked it. Got the archives open right here. Let's see:
In the year 1005, the 1337 v1k0rs raided the English coast for raping and pillaging...
...this only happens in Norway :)
This is an interesting issue. Any -minimally skilled- IT operator knows he should never tell passes to other people. But, what if this person dies? How can we safely store passwords so that those can be retrieved if "shit happens"? Probably we cannot use encription (you need a pass to decrypt stuff), so what? Probably for most of us, a piece of paper in a safe place at home is enough, hackers *usually* do not break-in to get passwords. But I guess there is people around protecting *really* important data, and they do not trust anyone... what can they do to make passwords "undiscoverable" until "death" or sudden amnesy?
:dikappa
common utilities
1) tar
2) ar
3) grep
4) ps
and not so common
5) rep (well its installed on my system, but I'd never heard of it, further investigation reveals it to be a standalone lisp interpretter from the librep package (see "info librep", I am indeed learning something new every day))
A little info:
The database is from Dbase 4, I don't know how the security is on that format. It contains data about the norwegian linguist Ivar Aasen. For those interested in giving it a try, just search on norwegian pages to find the directors email address (name in another post). He's received quite a few emails already... (No, won't give the address here, pity the one who gets his email published on Slashdot).
Please excuse crappy english, save your grammatic flames.
Are you a grammar Nazi? I'm trying to improve my English; please correct my errors!
I wish I could help, but I do intend to travel to the US at some later time in my life, and I don't want to be arrested for circumventig a protection device or something... Boy, do you americans have stupid laws...
free the mallocs!
A simple program... something to send that important email, decrypt the data that you honestly don't have to safeguard anymore, etc. A program to take action when you haven't proven (password | biometric | whatever...) your continued existance on a pre-arranged schedule.
And wouldn't you know it, one exists!
I caught this discussion at Ars Technica last month. It refers to a cool-sounding program called "Dead Man's Switch (DMS)", which caught the attention of the New York Times.
Just a few issues...
- Don't go on vacation for a longer period of time than you have the 'bot set for
- What happens when you actually do pass on to the great unknown, don't manage to pay your bills, and your (ISP | power company | shell host) kills your service?
- Or, more simply, what if your next of kin just tag the 'ol power switch?
Oh well... no person (or thing!) is perfect. Norway is keenly aware of this right now.(see either link, "If you're reading this, I'm dead!" type goofs have happened!)
"...America's great minds of today, teaching America's great minds of tomorrow. Poor bastards." -- A Beautiful Min
Crack a password, save history.
Get a cable modem, go to jail. [slashdot.org].
What kind of crazy backwards world are we living in?
Ladies and Gentlemen of slashdot it does not make sense. If Chewbacca lives on Endor you must acquit.
Well? What's the URL so we can all try it? They gotta trust me, I'm swedish! ;-)
This is actually a pretty serious issue with any kind of system where only one person has the password.
The ISP I once working for nearly went out of business several years back because the only tech with high level access was in a serious car accident and out of action for a month or so.
Its all very well not writing down passwords, and saying that nothing is going to happen to you, but in the real world, people get ill, run over, fall down etc. - In large companies its more then likely not a problem, but in a small company that has only one tech person doing everything, people need to make sure there is a plan of action for if that person becomes unreachable for any reason.
I saw the light at the end of the tunnel... But it was just someone with a flashlight bringing more work.
The National Centre of the New Norwegian Language and Culture
The New Norwegian Language
Ivar Aasen
Roses are #FF0000, violets are #0000FF, all my base are belong to you
Days ago, Ottar Grepstad, director of the culture center and literary museum on the west coast of Norway, was busy selecting his expert of choice to hack a password known only by a dead man. It has been revealed that only minutes after his public appeal for a skiller hax0r to recover this password, his archive was ow3nd by Kevin Mitnick. The notorious hacker released information found in the archive that seems to indicate that Britney Spears was concieved by using frozen sperm from non other than Mike Tyson himself. The egg donor was only referred to in the archive as "Camilla" and it is suspected she is the same woman that Prince Charles is dating.
The following info would help:
Combine that with the dictionary, mix well, apply cracking script and, most likely, open sesame.
As Richard Feynman used to say about safes, 99.9% of what keeps people from getting in is the perception of security, not real security. This from a guy who used to sneak in & out of Los Alamos at will during the Manhattan project.
The only tool you've got against psychosis is experience.
(blinks) Isn't that sort of like "The Germans, not including The French" ?
No. To a European, "America" == North and South America, including Canada, Mexico, USA, Peru, French Guiana, etc.
I love it when a European tells me that an average American is so badly schooled that the average European better knows their American history. After asking them who Malcolm Little is, which they never know, and after patiently listening to how some hollywood movie has history all wrong (what a shocker, that), I usually give them an example of classy European geography like this, and send them on their way.
1) Who is Malcolm Little?
2) It's a matter of perspective, a European considers all of North and South America to be "America", Americans and Canadians consider the USA to be "America".
It's like in Canada, somebody from BC would tell you that the "west" is BC and Alberta, somebody from Alberta will tell you it's BC, Alberta, and maybe Saskatchewan. And somebody from SK will tell you that the "East" is Ontario and Quebec, where somebody from Ontario or Quebec will tell you that they're "Central" Canada, when technically they are not, the centre is in Manitoba.
God save our Queen, and Heaven bless The Maple Leaf Forever!
If someone was interested in this data, they should have covered this kind of situation under a risk management plan. Hindsight being 20/20 and all that, they did not, and someone is now holding the bag. Because there is a file that is known to contain the data they want, they hold out hope that it will be salvageable.
:-)
In reality, this situation is almost the same as if a fire had destroyed the building along with the data, or even as if the person responsible for the data intended for it to die with him. There is a chance, however large or small, that the data will be recovered, but from a business perspective, an appropriate response would be to consider it a loss, start collecting the data again, and learn from the experience. Retrieving the data from the encrypted file is an interesting exercise, but one with uncertain results. Push the file into an academic circle and hope for the best.
In this case, having the file is misleading a management decision, because it appears as if they still have the data. In reality, they do not, unless an unlikely contingency occurs where someone can retrieve it. Since nobody seems to be able to put a delivery date on that retrieval, or even state the degree of cetrainty with which it can be retrieved, the correct business decision would probably be to consider it lost.
I'm guessing it's a loss not covered by their insurance.
This is a harsh assessment of the situation, and I'm only making it because I'm not the one with the data that needs to be recovered
Another thing I notice is that the party responsible for the data seems interested in limiting the number of people who will get the opportunity to try to crack this, as opposed to just posting the thing to the world as a challenge, perhaps with a reward to the first person to break it. Remember the King Arthur legend -- Arthur wasn't authorized to try for Excalibur!
The details in the article are sketchy. The title of the Slashdot article seems to be pretty misleading. The file in question doesn't contin the historical documents themselves, but an index to them?
I'm sorry to hear that a researcher has died in Norway.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
UN Peacekeepers were sent in to Scandinavia today to avert the escalation of an increasingly bitter round of invective between representatives of the area's countries. Tensions began to abate, however, as the traditional taunting gave way to the relatively modern sport of "USA-Bashing."
Milo