Slashdot Mirror
The Search for Secret Shuttle Parts
Slashdot readers have been submitting this story about the search
for secret shuttle parts with all sorts of insane conspiracy theories attached to their cut & paste of the URL. It's apparently just the box that handled encryption for messages, so of course Uncle Sam wants it back. Quite the needle in a haystack tho.
Before you start searching the ground start looking on eBay. Maybe its easier to find stuff there....
And of course, there's no better way to keep people from being interested in opening a little black box than to write "Secret Government Property" on the faceplate.
Libertarians somehow believe that private businesses should be stronger than governments but weaker than individuals.
It is an 8-track tape player.
Ok, the veil of secrecy is off - it's a black-box text conversion device. To encrypt communications, it takes the first letter of the word, moves it to the end of the word, and adds an "ay". This type of encryption is also going to be replacing CSS for DVD's, so there's a lot of money being poured into finding it now. ;) Shhhh....
Secret Government Property? They should have disguised it as an 8-track tape player.
Or a copy of Daikatana...
That is pure dogma. The biggest enemy of security is dogma in place of thought.
The Germans had good reason to use security through obscurity. At the time there were NO ciphers available that were not vulnerable to analysis. It would not have taken an insane amount of additional computing power to break the allied codes. They were only slightly better by modern standards.
The enigma codes were broken in part because the Allies captured several enigma machines and code books. But the Germans knew that it was likely that this would happen. The Enigma system had been designed to be resistant to such attacks. It failed because it had one non obvious flwa - a letter never encrybecpted to itself and the operators were indisciplined.
The reason that security through obscurity is bad is it leads to complacency. But it is not the only way people can become complacent. As recently as 1992 I was arguing with UNIX sysadmins on comp.sys.computing that shaddow passowrds were necessary for UNIX since crack etc. were a real threat. Oh no came the reply you are ignorant, you don't understand, you are promoting security through obscurity.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
Score: (-1, Plagiarism)
J
I suppose it's a good thing for the US government that the crash happened on home territory. When landing, the shuttle passes first over a great deal of sea (Pacific Ocean) and then lots of US soil.
Imagine a scenario where the geographical circumstances would not be so favourable and the parts of the shuttle would have fallen and crashed into another (perhaps less friendly) country. Would the US kidly ask for the debris to be returned, or would they engage into a secret undercover recovery operation in order to retrieve these top secret components?
What if this operation would have to be so extensive, that it could not be held secret? To what lengths do you think the US government would go in order to re-acquire the parts?