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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.
I'm in the US submarine force and I'll just suggest that the US is pretty good at getting a job done when (1) they want it done and when (2) the doors are closed to the public.
Separately, learn some of the facts surrounding JFK's assassination (and the likes who go to no end to increase their power) and you'll get a feel for what goes on behind closed doors. It's very depressing.
G-Force music visualization
If anyone wants a link to the original New York Times (#include "free_reg") article by William Safire about this incident, here it is. Now you don't have to hunt down the dupe to read it.
ediron2:
...
Thanks for sending the notes; it looks like the note-to-editor system is down at the moment, unfortunately. It *is* bedtime for me, but I was actually sitting there waiting, reading email
Sorry, I missed this one the first time around.
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
If this doesn't prove the case for open source software, I don't know what will.
... at the very least.
Those Russkies should've broken out their debuggers on these binaries before putting them into operation
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
obligatory "you must be new here" line....
there's a bit of information on the CIA's website about it too. no explosion info though
Jeremy Logan's Website.
And I really wouldnt like to be in the shoes of the morons who manage to convince people that they planted that software. If by some weird coincidence that thing was within 10 miles of any of the control rooms of that pipeline which exploded. I can just imagine 400 beraved families suing the Uncle Sam under the Patriot act for ... ahem... terrorist acts.
Oh and to make things more interesting, as this medical journal indicates, the US actually sent doctors to treat the poor burned children...
The US had not declared war against the USSR, yet commited acts of sabotage and assassination against Russian targets. Doesn't that make the CIA and the US regiem terrorists?
Way to "think outside the box" and see the Cold War for what it really was: unilateral aggression by the USA and CIA against the poor, defenseless USSR and KGB! Seriously, it's one thing when you're talking about the USA bullying some third world country, but comparing that to the Cold War is apples and oranges (and a cheap attempt to score some anti-American karma points). And if you want to know which of these two formerly-equally-matched superpowers was the real terrorist regime, put it this way: there wasn't exactly a flood of Americans expatriating to Moscow to flee CIA gulags.
Cheers,
IT
Power corrupts. PowerPoint corrupts absolutely.
There were a number of reasons why the US Navy thought Pearl was safe.
1: Range. Japanese ships were not thought to have the range to come all the way to Pearl. Much less undetected. They developed refueling techniques to make this possible.
2: Bombs vs Battleships. Conventional bombs of the day were *not* able to affect a Battleship ( the ship used to project power in those days, the day of the carrier was not yet there, they were mainly seen as good for scouting ( battlecruiser replacements ) ). The deck armour was too thick. So, what about Arizona, you ask? Good question. They converted 16" Battleship shells ( the very items designed to go through the deck armour, *and* the much thicker side ( hull ) armour into bombs by adding fins. Then they dropped them from approx 10k meters so that they would have the KE to do the job. In that day, only torpedoes were thought to have what it took to sink a battleship. Which leads me to:
3: Topedoes. The harbor was thought to be safe from attack by torpedoes, as it was only about 40 feet deep ( just a bit deeper than the draught of the ships, IIRC ). This is important as the torpedoes of that day usually sunk to about 75 feet after being dropped from the airplane. The British had pulled off a similar raid at Taranto against the Italian navy using this, but that harbor was deeper than Pearl. The Japanese attached breakaway fins to the torpedoes to arrest their fall on hitting the water, keeping them from sinking so far, and thereby made the attack possible.
Not to mention that the CIA did not exist in those days.
And while I too would like to see our intellegence agencys perform better, I would suggest that it is altogether too easy to armchair QB what they do. I am sure that you have been through something that you did not see coming, but in hindsight, you kick yourself because it was blindingly obvious ( from that side of the event ). Go try to do that job before you kick them too hard about how they have done it.
emt 377 emt 4