Hollywood movies have long specialised in portraying a certain kind of computer security situation: the one in which a grungy ace hacker has 13 seconds to crack the password needed to shut down a brace of fully-armed nuclear missiles, and after two failed attempts finally manages to guess the right combination, averting Armageddon with half a second to spare. Sneak has always laughed in the face of such lunacy, but it turns out that the situation is not quite so ludicrous after all. Apparently for most of the 1970s, the super-secret code number used to authorise control over US Minuteman intercontinental ballistic missiles was, rather worryingly, zero-zero-zero-zero-zero-zero-zero-zero. "The Strategic Air Command ... remained far less concerned about unauthorised launches than about the potential of [coded] safeguards to interfere with wartime launch orders," recalls former launch control officer Bruce Blair. Of course nothing so stupid would happen today. No, it would probably be stupider.

03 Jun 2004