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NASA Hacker Gary McKinnon Interviewed
An anonymous reader writes "A BBC article reports about an interview between Click and Gary McKinnon who in 2002 hacked into NASA and other US Military networks. In the interview he talks about how he accessed machines by using default passwords and a conversation with a NASA network engineer using Wordpad. He also talks about how he found information about anti-gravity, UFO technology, free energy and how UFOs are regularly airbrushed out from high-resolution satellite images."
No, the graphical remote viewer works frame by frame. It's a Java application, so there's nothing to save on your hard drive, or at least if it is, only one frame at a time.
What kind of moron spends 3 years breaking into government computers and doesn't know how to do a screen capture or see the importance of saving what he's doing. Sorry folks, but from reading this interview, he seems like bullshit.
Is he certain he didn't stumble on a NASA honeypot?
I will preemptively state that UFO does not necessarily mean extraterrestrial technology or not from this planet. In the raw form of the acronym, it means simple that there is an Unidentified Flying Object. There are most likely hundreds of types of aircraft that governments around the world would refuse to classify due to a need to keep their enemies in the dark (national security).
From the article: He interchangeably uses "suppressed technology" with "UFO technology." I'm certain the United States Government has tons of suppressed technology as well as any other government for obvious reasons.
I should finish the quote, however: Ok, that last bit about free energy, you can go ahead and call him a nut job. And then there's also this: Yeah, Gary, it sure is crazy how you can mess with the color quality and resolution of an image to make it look like my family picture is really some image a green gelatinous blob that eats people. Uh, I only heard a story about a blimp above the earth's atmosphere. Where was the story where you saw a device that produced unlimited amounts of energy?
"In my house, we obey the laws of thermodynamics!" - Homer Simpson
My work here is dung.
Reality is defined by the maddest person in the room
This guys best defense would be to issue a full and frank admission of guilt.
Who would believe him?
SCO employee? Check out the bounty
The other thing is about the "airbrushing UFOs out of photos.."
A UFO could be anything - Unidentified Flying Object - doesn't mean flying saucer from the planet Krypton. AND...if there really was flying saucers from Krypton out there, who's keeping the Europeans, Chinese, Russians, etc... from publishing those photos...
I agree with previous posters - BS.
The guy's trying to make a living on the talk-show circuit - somehow. Is there a way of finding out if he's being compensated for these "interviews"?
The last time he was interviewed, he said he didn't find any real proof for UFOs, just a file for "non-earth-based marines" (or something of that sort, it's been a year since I heard it). And now he suddenly has more info? This sounds to me like he's running out of money and tries to sell a story.
He forgot about UPC labels and the ZIP+4 system (which is really a secret relocation program). Just pray they never use it. =)
"I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence or insanity but they've always worked for me" - HST
Like this one?
(Yes, I know it's probably a water droplet on a high-altitude atmospheric camera, since there's a grid of them. Why wouldn't the "UFOs" airbrushed out by NASA also be weather balloons and similar artifacts?)
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
I for one am getting sick and tired of various nutjobs, scoundrels and losers latching onto the "energy conspiracy" bandwagon in order to justify stupidity.
I've never met a hacker unable to grab an image- be it from cache or screenshot. This guy is full of shit, and looking for sympathy. Period.
However: despite these loons, there *is* a very real "energy conspiracy". And guess what? It doesn't involve alien races or secret technology, it involves PLANTS (ya know, grow from dirt, rather cheap and eco-friendly).
Biodiesel. Hemp. There ARE solutions. There ARE forces holding back progress.
And every time a fool like this "latches on" to "the cause" it hurts the credibility of some wonderful people who are are trying against all odds to save us from ourselves.
barack to the future?
1) Hacking into NASA for three years with a 56k only?
2) What about using the "Print" button which makes a screenshot? (Well, in Windows it does.)
3) They are suppressing free energy? Why? Free energy would launch an incredible boom for economy, help greatly in pollution reduction, provide an excellent way of getting rid of oil dependency, provide instant cheap space exploration (and thus access to the vast resources on the moon and in the asteroid belt, for example), erase any poverty and/or hunger etc. So WHY should anyone suppress that? Can anyone tell me why?
This sig does not contain any SCO code.
was just fucking with him - trolling a hacker for laughs. Then it hits the press and NASA has a public relations problem on its hands. whoops.
Anyone who thinks that the US government is sitting on technology that would give us greater air superiority in combat, make exploration and military domination of space easy, eliminate a significant portion of our trade deficit, make us no longer beholden to countries like Iran, Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, and Russia, etc., etc. is a complete and total lunatic.
If we had alien technology, had reverse engineered it, and knew how to make it work, we would be using it right now.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
"I wrote a tiny Perl script that tied together other people's programs that search for blank passwords, so you could scan 65,000 machines in just over eight minutes."
65000/8 = 8125 per min.
8125/60 = 135 per sec.
Dunno about that. Just the time it takes to bring up a socket and get some syn/ack going chews up a good portion of a second. Maybe he was searching a local password database.
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The thing that always surprises me about these Giant Conspiracy nutjobs is that they never really ask themselves how such a conspiracy would *work*. There must be thousands of people in the know, going back for at least 30 years -- and they really think this wouldn't have leaked by now??
Apple can't keep the date they launch new computers secret (next Tuesday for the next batch intel powerbooks, by all accounts). And that is a secret with a finite lifetime (three months ago not even Steve Jobs knew the date -- a week from now everyone will know it).
The NSA can't randomly listen in on international calls for more than a year or two without someone blowing the whistle. The CIA grabs some very bad guy in Pakistan and holds his head underwater, and a few months later we can all read about it in the New Yorker.
Remember this giant conspiracy is brought to you by the same people who run FEMA and promote "absitence only" sex education as a solution to teen pregnancy. But somehow the conspiracy works well until some script kiddie breaks into NASA over a dialup line (you plan to find free energy devices that will change the face of civilization, and you can't spring for DSL??) and you find that all these "secrets" are protected by default passwords. This guy presumably did hack into NASA, but the rest of it crap -- he is either nuts, or hoping that the Feds will decide it isn't worth the bother to have the guy spouting this nonsense on the stand.
Consider this: WHY would you show off your MOST ADVANCED technology if your LESS ADVANCED technology already IS SUPERIOUR to the adversarys?
You've obviously never read up on the kind of technological fantasies the US military has. Despite your BOLD STATEMENTS that EMPHATICALLY use CAPITALIZED WORDS which make me DOUBT YOUR SANITY, the US military is completely and totally incapable of understanding the words "good enough." Even though our military technology can stomp on anyone on the planet, the Pentagon has long argued for increased capabilities against a phantom Chinese threat. They conjure up the image of China suddenly having tech on par with ours in 10-20 years as a boogeyman to justify bigger and fatter budgets for more powerful weapons.
Second, the space program is a black eye for the US. It was a prominent sign of American strength and leadership that has decayed into a series of failures. It costs a ridiculous amount of money to send a space shuttle up and to deploy our many satellites. If we had alien technology, then we could half NASA's budget and accomplish the same goals. We could also cheaply weaponize space like the Pentagon always fantasizes about.
Third, oil. We have a lot of shady alliances worldwide that revolve completely around access to oil. Take Saudi Arabia. We've known for decades that the Saudis are state sponsors of terrorist groups and have spent their money heavily to foment Muslim radicalism. We know that the majority of the 9-11 attackers were Saudis. However, we're still all buddy-buddy with them because of oil. If we weren't dependent on oil, we could pressure the country towards democracy or at least leave it as some sort of backwater of no importance and focus on developing more friendly allies elsewhere.
Take Venezuela. The US government has long thought that the rise of Communism and Socialism in Latin America was to be stopped at all costs -- even to the point of toppling democracies for dictatorships. (I really, really hate this policy, BTW.) Venezuela is the vanguard of a new South American socialism movement, and it only succeeds because the state oil industry can support the entire economy. Guess what country is the number one customer of Venezuela despite our official dislike of Chavez? The US of course.
Take Iran. Right now, our conflict with Iran over nuclear power/weapons is sending oil prices skyrocketting and hurting Americans. If we had free energy, then Iran would have no leverage. If we were smart, we'd give it to the Chinese and the Russians and remove the economic leverage that makes them veto UN resolutions against Iran, Sudan, etc.
Oil blocks a very, very large amount of US foreign policy goals and make us have some goals that are very unsavory. Free energy would not only boost our economy, but it would make many of Washington's dreams possible. To say that we have it and aren't using it is to BLATANTLY IGNORE GEOPOLITICS.
Then again, I don't expect to reach you with facts. For crying out loud, you post a link to a site which goes on about "Illuminati," "The New World Order," and "Chemtrails." If you can offer a RATIONAL explanation of why we have a greater interest in hiding technology than in using it, I'd love to hear it. Bonus points if you can explain why 100 years advanced military technology isn't being used in Iraq right now.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
I'm pretty sure when he said hand, he meant cursor. It sounded to me like he was using a remote control application, in which case what he describes is perfectly plausible. It would have been v slow over 56k though.
On the wordpad conversation, in windows 98, you definitely could have a two way conversation with any text-editor you want.
We used to do it using the sub-seven trojan when i was at uni.
I havent looked into similar technology with windows xp, but no doubt it's possible.
It seems every so many years this sort of thing happens as a dumbing down of the general population.
2 /www.worldgame.org/wwwproject/
many of the posts here point out the flaws in what this guy presents, but if he really did hack into some classified systems and he is that dumb to not know how to save a screen image....
what is he really saying?
that even a monkey can hack into national security?
Oh wait, didn't some research expose that a monkey was able to hack into the diebold voting machines???
There are alot of people on this planet that know that so called alien life exist, technology more advanced than what we have created exist and even sources of so called free energy, etc. SO WHAT?
The fact of the matter is that is NOT what we are doing with our time here.
here is something else we are not doing, though we have the knowledge, man power and natural resources to do it
and there is nothing hidden about it.
http://www.unesco.org/education/tlsf/theme_a/mod0
since we can't even help ourselves, or don't show a real intent or effort to, then what the fuck useful is it to even acknowledge the existance of such advanced stuff?
unless you just want to insult others.
He was (idiotically) using a VNC style remote administration program. It sends a jpeg stream of desktop screen captures and forwards your mouse movements/clicks. By "hand" he surely meant "cursor" which he could see move if somebody else touched the mouse. The WordPad conversation was possible simply because both parties were looking at and inputting to the same window.
polygraphs are worthless pseudocience, whose only merit is in their ability to trick the gullible into confessing. They can be trivially defeated, for example by tensing your anal sphincter during the control questions (the ones where they try to get you to lie), in order to set a high baseline.
In all fairness we steamrolled Iraq and have suffered exceedingly low casualties. A low level, extremely unsuccessful, resistance is no indication that we're not using extremely advanced technology.
True, but "Shock and Awe" would've been even more awesome with fighter jets that could make 90 degree turns and any sorts of weapons based on free energy technology.
Though, I think if we had 100 year+ tech, we would have solved the IED sooner.
Same here. At the very least, you'd think we'd have done some about the insurgency with those fancy government mind control lasers I keep hearing about.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
"have blank administrator passwords."
/.ers, but why would you have stuff that's as secret as free energy and aliens and whatnot on a machine that's connected to the internet? Wouldn't it make more sense to keep that sort of information on a network that has no physical connection to the net? Something where you have to actually physically gain access to a computer on the network to see the information?
I certainly expect/hope they've been changed to something slightly better than that now that it's getting press...
Hopefully more accurate to say "had blank administrator passwords."
Now, I'm not as techy as most
I am seeing a lot of criticism but you are all looking for holes. Addressing those arguments:
* The "hand moving accross".. he meant the mouse was then controlled by someone viewing the desktop who realized he was remotely controlling.
* [possibly] that same person launched wordpad to type a message knowing he would see it, "who are you? what are you doing?"
* He didn't save anything because he was just discovering it and didn't know what he would be looking at in advance. Then he was cut off.
There is nothing unbelievable about his story unless you are still in denial that the governments are hiding free energy technology and awareness of alien life from the general public. If he has changed his story at all, it is probably because he is now contending with the fact that he may spend the rest of his life in 6'x6' concrete room in the US.
Free Energy is the death blow to the entire class/economic system that keeps most of the world enslaved to 12 families. If we all had access to Free Energy, no one would have to "Earn a Living", we would just live (imagine that). The perfect example is when J.P. Morgan pulled all his funding and effectively shut down Nikola Tesla when he realized Tesla was working on a free energy system. He said (parapharsing possibly) "if it's free to anyone, where do I put the meter?". In a matter of years Wardenclyffe was being dismantled and we know how the rest of the story goes.
Believe it.
Leaving conspiracy theories aside for a second, isn't it just as interesting and worth commenting on that several American military administrator users that are accessible over the internet aren't password protected, or that the same government is trying to throw this person in jail for sixty years for using these accounts, double what you'd get in the UK (the hacker's own country) for murder?
I'm not sure that I believe that females of any part of the animal kingdom think that drummers make superior mates.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Yes, technological fantasies. It spent millions during the Cold War looking into remote viewing - a posh name for psychics. On a programme on the Discovery channel they did an experiment to test this - using a game of Battleships. The person who was just choosing squares at random was doing FAR much better than the guy who claimed to be psychic. But it's still utter rubbish.
Those using pirated Tinysoft signatures(TM) are a real threat to society and should all be thrown in jail.
The international wealthy have their wealth invested in the current petroleum based economy. If there really is a viable new technology, or one comes around, they would do everything they can to prevent it from getting a foothold and stopping the profit from the petroleum economy.
Yeah, yeah, and the oil industry is hiding the 100 MPG carburetor and a car that can run on water.
You know what? A little over 100 years ago, all the weatlhiest Americans and international investors had their money invested in railroads and related industries. The railroad was obsoleted for travel and for light shipping by the automobile and the airplane. The descendents of the people who were rich back then are still rich now.
I don't buy the argument that the oil companies could prevent such technology from being found out about or that their investors would be all that interested in stopping it instead of getting all their money into it first or at least into other lucrative industries. Why do you think Bill Gates diversified his portfolio years ago?
We've had many Presidents who were boosters of the space program or at least of our ICBM program during the Cold War. Had we a cheap way of getting to space based on alien technology, then why the hell would we waste all that money on chemical rockets when the life of the nation was on the line in nuclear detente? We could've dominated space over the Soviet Union with a fleet of craft, knocked nukes out of orbit on launch, and pretty much won the Cold War as a conventional war without all of the fuss.
Face it, Occam's Razor demands that the most simple explanation (that we don't have the technology) should be listened to over the theory that we have all the technology but the world hasn't been shaped by it because of a coalltion of people working for interests that don't match the public interests they should have.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
from http://forums.fark.com/cgi/fark/comments.pl?IDLink =2051653
erewhon wrote:
It seems that the media of most countries champion the deeds of its "hackers", even when they aren't worth championing, in a manner akin to boosting sports teams, etc. In this case the Brit media wants the world to believe that the UK harbours uber-genius computer hackers, when in fact they've just interviewed some no-nothing dick with a 'Hacking for Dummies' book balanced on his lap.
Here in New Zealand the same thing happens: a few years ago an employee of one of the country's largest ISPs shared his staff login with his little brother. The little brother then shared it with one of his little friends, who then promptly logged in and randomly began deleting stuff, including many customer websites. Just another clueless n00b, yet the local media feted him as an 'unstoppable and deadly genius hacker'.
Unfortunately the media know that they are lying to an audience willing to be lied to, since the unwashed masses thrill to hear that they have dangerous evil geniuses amongst them.
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