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If You Hack NBC, You Don't Get to Meet Tom Brokaw
subgeek writes "Security Focus Online is carrying this story about the spot that Adrian Lamo almost had on the NBC Nightly News with Tom Brokaw. NBC changed their mind after they realized the possible legal implications of filming someone hack corporate systems. NBC also seemed a bit touchy that Lamo had gotten into their system so handily. According to the article, it took him about five minutes and one guessed password to get inside NBC's intranet from a computer at a Kinko's. Lamo's comment: "It was a very full service system.""
of homer...
Life is the leading cause of death in America.
Perhaps they just didn't want to admit that they'd been cracked by somebody with the last name of "Lame-O".
Reminds me of the great SNL skit with Nicholas Cage:
"The name is Dumass, Dumass!"
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
Teenage intruder: See? I run nmap 234.34.53.5 and I get a list of all the ports that are open on their machine. I can then do some other stuff with libpcap...
Brokaw: Wardrobe!....dammit, get this kid a large sleek trenchcoat, combat boots, and a pair of those $300 designer sunglasses. They're expecting neo, not urkel. Audio!...cue that "techno" music they listen to. (to "hacker")Okay, kid, your motivation is to disrupt The System, bring down The Corporate Machine that runs the government, and then make it with Carrie Ann Moss in a hovercraft.
Teenage intruder: But I just thought I would show you how I learned about this network vulnerability in my quest for knowl....
Brokaw: (to cameraman) Start rolling in five, four, three, two...
Ergonomica Auctorita Illico!
It would have been great if he would have gotten into the NBC Nightly News teleprompter and put at the end of Tom Brokaw's lines "...and in other news, while visiting a low-income daycare center Dick Cheney bit the head off an infant. Additionally, I am a turnip, vroom vroom."
I bet he'd say it.
So, maybe he doesn't get his exposé on NBC about cracking NBC's networks...
But I'll bet that ABC would be happy do do a report on cracking NBC's networks...
Where are you, Mr. Jennings...
"I am VERY curious as to what it was."
I got a chance to see the video. It was just five asterisks.
"Derp de derp."
"I'm guessing he tried 'god'."
... and so on.
No, that only happens in the movies. Here are some other notable characteristics of fictional computers:
- They always use fonts that are at least an inch high
- Windows does not exist, nor does Mac, or anything else we've ever seen
- Computer displays are extremely animated. (They're also very noisy...) Fortunately, they have plenty of hard drive space (even in the early nineties) to play back pre-rendered animations.
- Despite the benefits of using a mouse, using a movie computer requires bursts of constant typing. The space bar and backspace keys are never used.
- Movie computers are not capable of multitasking. All you get is the exact interface you need to advance the plot.
The password was probably: 'password'.
The MacOS running WebStar and other webservers as has never been exploited or defaced, and are are unbreakable based on historical evidence.
Based on historical evidence, my backyard shed is burglar-proof.