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How The CIA Duped The Soviets' Line X Network
sundling writes "There are interesting articles here(1) and here(2)
on software espionage against the Soviets.
In the Ronald Reagan era, a Soviet spy network (Line X Network) was looking to steal software to run oil pipelines. The CIA found out what they were trying to steal and fed them bogus versions. This is of course not the only time the CIA has done this.
... An article on the ethics of programming mentions this very topic and the moral implications." Update: 03/02 09:22 GMT by T : Oops -- this is a dupe.
Indeed! How slashdot duped its readers into thinking this one hadn't already been showed!!!!!!!!!
How The CIA Duped The Soviets' Line X Network
Tierce
Who sponsors your feelings?
Or what else is Windows supposed to be ;)?
- 4r0g
the Soviets *should* have embraced open source.
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
Line X...
Linux...
hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
We'd all be drinking Vodka and making "In Democratic Europe" jokes?
Heck I'd go as far to say that the current war on terror is completely void of any intelligence, human or otherwise.
23c. In no way do the authors of this software take responsibility or blame for any pipeline explosions that may or may not occur through the normal use of this software.
The odd dupe is OK, for me at least. I never saw this story the first time round. Some people don't sit and read every single story on Slashdot, all the time, ever, you know. I might have been (gasp) out, or on holiday.
Get your own free personal location tracker
If they had used OSS this wouldn't have happened to them.
And why should the US beleive that Micro$hit doesn't do this kind of thing to them? there is no one that can really be sure of close source software.
Less look fast, more go fast.
"Declared war". How quaint.
obligatory "you must be new here" line....
I can see it now, kazza dispensing only mislabeled copies of "Feelings"
I thought that was how all software developers treat their customers.
There are 10 kinds of people; those who know ternary, those who don't, and those now hunting for a dictionary.
.. the Russians never managed to sneak some spy laden software into the US, and UK, software so pervasive it'd work its way into every home in the world. Hey.. why's my copy of Tetris trying to send something past my firewall?
We don't have Arab Americans knocking down the CIA's door to go to work for them. And white people just don't blend in everywhere.
How about the old joke about US espionage in Soviet Union?
"A CIA agent had been trained for years to infiltrate the KGB. He had learned fluent Russian, knew everything there was to know about living and working in Russia etc. Then they smuggled him across the border.
He arrived at a small town on the countryside and asked the first person he could find for directions. The man listened for half a sentence, then carefully asked: 'You're an American, right?' The CIA agent was baffled. 'How'd you figure it out?!?'
'You see, we hardly ever see black people around here.'"
Communists using Line X ? Darl should be able to get a lot of mileage out of this one!
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Some company called Microsoft was trying to steal a government operating system, so the CIA fed them a bogus version....
Hmm.. wasn't Microsoft also around during Reagan's presidency?
Wasn't there also a blackout on the entire Eastern US due in-part to improper response by the control software to the outages that initially started at First Energy?
Isn't it also possible all these email worms, viruses, and trojans might be some form of espionage by workers planted at Microsoft?
No good. If the uproar over Janet Jackson is anything to go by, all the Brits will have to do is show the agent page 3 of The Sun and he'll have a fit.
In the second segment of Hafner and Markoff's Cyberpunk, they write about the crackers that Cliff Stoll found, and reveal that they went to the Soviets, saying they could hack into several government and military sites. The Soviets said what they'd rather have is Unix source code. So, while the rest of the crew had fun getting into NORAD looking for the WOPR, the one with a job as a sysadmin cut a couple extra tapes in the backup schedule and carried them through Brandenberg Gate.
Gee, I guess GNU really is communist. B)
It's not Timothy's fault; the CIA is feeding him duplicate stories.
All most Americans know about Canada is Shania Twain and Celine Dion. And we have snow. And live in Igloos. :-)
:P
That's not true. Ren and Stimpy taught me that Canada reeks of trees and that their number one export is dirt, so there!
jason
jason
Have a good day?! Impossible! I'm at work!
There are historical precedents for this sort of thing. According to one of my old high school teachers, when the Japanese were building up their war fleet in the years before WWII, they approached an American shipbuilding company about buying plans for old military ships. Smelling trouble, the company alerted the US government ahead of time and the plans were carefully changed. When the first ship was launched it immediately rolled over due to a deliberate weight imbalance in the bogus plans.
I've never been able to verify this story.