Dial 00000000 To Blow Up the World

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Dial 00000000 To Blow Up the World

Posted by timothy on Saturday November 30, 2013 @11:50PM from the your-public-servants dept.

Charliemopps writes "For 20 years the password for the U.S. nuclear arsenal was '00000000.' Kennedy instituted a security system on all nuclear warheads to prevent them from being armed by someone unauthorized. It was called PAL, and promised to secure the entire US arsenal around the world. Unfortunately for Kennedy (and I guess, the whole world) U.S. military leadership was more concerned about delaying a launch than securing Armageddon. They technically obeyed the order but then set the password to 8 Zeros, or '00000000'."

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Illusion shattered by Rosco+P.+Coltrane · 2013-11-30 23:54 · Score: 5, Funny

You mean to tell me, when WOPR was busy looking for the launch code in Wargames, it was all a bunch of crap?

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1. Re:Illusion shattered by Anonymous Coward · 2013-12-01 00:49 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  Off-topic, but note that playing an easily remembered set of numbers (not just 1-2-3-4-5-6, any set of numbers that you'll recognize) is bad for several reasons. One reason is that numbers which are special to you have a high probability of being special to someone else. The expected result of playing those numbers in a lottery is therefore lower than for other numbers. There are probably hundreds if not thousands of smartasses like your grandfather with whom he would have had to split the jackpot in case those numbers came up. Another important reason is that, however unlikely it is to have your special numbers come up, it is not impossible. When they do come up and just that time you didn't play, you'll kick your own arse for the rest of your life. This risk is a strong motivation to keep playing, which can lead to gambling addiction. So to lower your risk of getting addicted to gambling, don't ever bet on the same numbers.
2. Re:Illusion shattered by hey! · 2013-12-01 03:09 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  This is an example of "begging the question". "Randomness" is not a property of a number, it is a property of a sequence.
  This sounds like splitting hairs, but it actually makes a lot of confusing things clearer if instead of asking "Is this number random?" you ask "Was this number produced by a process that generates a random sequence?"
  Lets take the example of a combination. "0000000" is just as random as "3115435", but "0000000" was generated by a process which spits out easily keyed-in, easy-for-humans-to-remember numbers. In other words it's generated by a process that is biased towards spitting out numbers like "0000000" and "1234567".
  
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I always knew by UberVegeta · 2013-11-30 23:56 · Score: 5, Funny

that sending Snake all the way back to the blast furnance and that freezing warehouse to change the shape of the PAL override shape-memory alloy key was a waste of time. Damn it, Kojima!

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Thankfully.. by sjwt · 2013-11-30 23:58 · Score: 5, Funny

Thankfully this would not happen today, as after adding a captcha it is now totally undecipherable by man or machine.

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Obligatory by jones_supa · 2013-12-01 00:06 · Score: 5, Funny

That's the combination for my luggage!
Re:Dial "1" for a Brand New World by alphatel · 2013-12-01 00:08 · Score: 5, Funny

You mean to tell me, when WOPR was busy looking for the launch code in Wargames, it was all a bunch of crap?
They forgot to tell you that if you dial "1" you get a brand new world.
Actually the password might have been eight zeros, but you have to dial a 1 + area code to get the outside nuclear line.

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Roman-proof by Anonymous Coward · 2013-12-01 00:15 · Score: 5, Funny

Good thinking! If the Romans invade, they'll never be able to launch the missiles.
00000000 just as secure as 73618357 by mowchine · 2013-12-01 00:30 · Score: 5, Insightful

I saw some idiot claim that people just do not understand probability theory and state that in effect 00000000 is just as secure as 737474757. I would call him ignorant of hacking. What does one start with when cracking password protected systems? . . . a dictionary of common crap people use, like "000000000", "1111111111", "101010101010", "007007007007".
1. Re:00000000 just as secure as 73618357 by Anonymous Coward · 2013-12-01 01:00 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  00000000 is so unsafe. It would be ten times better to use 000000000.
Well... ya by Sycraft-fu · 2013-12-01 00:35 · Score: 5, Interesting

In particular because there is no central computer control. The military has always been real big about having humans in the chain, which is why this code isn't a big deal. It still required the two guys in the silos to turn their keys. There isn't any "OMG we hax the missiles!" shit that can go on. At the end of the day, only the operators in the silos can trigger a launch, it isn't on a network.
Same general deal in planes and so on. Like when a modern bombing mission is conducted, all the stuff is uploaded in to the computers beforehand, flight plan, targeting data, all that. The pilot is told on his HUD a countdown to when to release the bombs. Hitting the button doesn't release them either, the plane's computers decide when it is actually best to release. So what does it do? Allows the plane to release. If the pilot doesn't trigger, it can't drop, no matter if it thinks it should. The human is the final deciding factor.
Maybe the military will change their mind some day as automation increases, but for now they are real, real big on having a human have to be the final factor.
A systematic problem by CaptBubba · 2013-12-01 02:19 · Score: 5, Interesting

The book Command and Control by Eric Schlosser goes into the issues of the cold war control of our nukes in a wonderful way, detailing just how messed up our control of nukes was and how we are damn lucky that we didn't have an accidental nuclear detonation at some point (there were plenty of accidental conventional detonations that by sheer luck didn't have a nuclear core in them).
Nuclear weapons are "always/never" devices in that they should always work when you want them to and never work when you don't. The military only cared about the "always" side of the equation. So much so that they even nixed the idea of an inertial switch in fusing mechanism of the reentry vehicles of ICBMs that would only connect the detonation systems after detecting the g-forces of reentry.
Further any suggestion of improving the control of the nukes was met with grumpy rage at civilians daring to tell the military how to run its business as well as fights between the Air Force, Army, and Navy over funding and power.
Not only... by DerekLyons · 2013-12-01 02:47 · Score: 5, Informative

Not only a dupe, but old, old news. This has been publicly and widely known for nearly a decade.
Re:When it comes to Nuclear Weapons by Ultracrepidarian · 2013-12-01 11:39 · Score: 5, Funny

Access to the big red button should be restricted to those who can pronounce nuclear.