The World's Most Dangerous Password

NonNullSet writes "Minutemen ICBMs were deployed in the early 1960s, and grew to over 1000 in number. They were allegedly protected from a "rogue launch" by an approach known as PAL (Permissive Action Link). The PAL required that the correct 8-digit launch code be entered by the missiliers before the missile would establish ignition. What if all the PAL codes had been set to '00000000,' and 'everyone' in the Strategic Air Command knew it? That is unbelievably what happened, as described in this article from the Center for Defense Information. Not exactly a great example for getting people to choose difficult passwords!"

Someone's gotta say it

[Roland Piquepaille]

What if all the PAL codes had been set to '00000000,' and 'everyone' in the Strategic Air Command knew it?

Stupid David played with the WOPR again!

At least they're default routers...

[Anonymous Coward]

Username: cisco

password: cisco

'nuff said.

That's a really good password!

[rice_burners_suck]

And here I thought that password would be something like, "password" or "login"... Instead, they chose the kind of code an idiot would put on his luggage.

Hilarious

[sam0ht]

Funniest thing I've read all day. Makes lots of seemingly 'implausible' films about unauthorised nuke launches and hacking, a lot less implausible.

'Hmm.. it's asking for a password ? Try zero zero zero'

At least it wasn't...

[Draconix]

12345 Though now we know the President's suitcase combination. :)

Re:trust

[James Lewis]

Ahh, but is there really a "right" way to do war?

Heh... just had to say that.

I can just picture world war 3 starting.

[m0rphin3]

Airman 1: Hey, Jeff, what do you think the secret password is?
Airman 2: Dunno. Try P-A-S-S-W-O-R-D or something.
Airman 1: Nah, it's just numerals. And it's not like the secret code could be 0000000. Nobody would be _that_ stupid.

*ATTENTION - PREPARE FOR GLOBAL THERMONUCLEAR WAR*

Airman 1: What you say!

If a hacker

[NIK282000]

If a hacker tried to brute force that, I think it would have been the fastest hack on record.

Space Balls anybody?

[lordrich]

ROLAND: No, wait, wait. I'll tell. I'll tell.

HELMET: I knew it would work. All right, give to me.

ROLAND: The combination is one.

HELMET: One.

SANDURZ: One.

ROLAND: Two.

HELMET: Two.

SANDURZ: Two.

ROLAND: Three.

HELMET: Three.

SANDURZ: Three

ROLAND: Four.

HELMET: Four.

SANDURZ: Four.

ROLAND: Five.

HELMET: Five.

SANDURZ: Five.

HELMET: So the combination is one, two, three, four, five. That's the stupidest combination I've ever heard in my life. That's the kinda thing an idiot would have on his luggage.

HELMET: We have the combination.

SKROOB: Great. Now we can take every last breath fresh air from planet Druidia. What's the combination?

SANDURZ: One, two, three, four, five.

SKROOB: One, two, three, four, five? That's amazing. I've got the same combination on my luggage.

My Luggage

[UnifiedTechs]

Great, now I need to change the combination on my luggage!!

Re:At least it wasn't...

[cybrchld]

So the combination is one, two, three, four, five? That's the stupidest combination I've ever heard in my life! The kind of thing an idiot would have on his luggage!

DarkHelmet - Spaceballs

No worries

[spellraiser]

Just enter the recall code. Mandrake has told us it's a variation of the letters POE, which probably stands for 'Purity Of Essence' or 'Peace On Earth'. Just try all the variations, and the launch will be aborted. Hooray!

Now stop fighting in the War Room!

I here have a scan of a manual (funny as hell)

[Lord Graga]

I stumbled over THIS [leech.dk] manual about passwords one day, and I found it absolutely amusing!

68533687

[Lepruhkawn]

NUKEEMUP!!!! They should've had me pick.

Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why use the French standard for such an important function as defense when we have a perfectly good American-as-apple-pie NTSC?

It's even worse than you think...

[Viadd]

00000000 was the name of Secretary of Defense McNamara's dog.

Re:That's a really good password!

[Inominate]

Remind me to change the combonation on my luggage.

Re:Drugs, sex, and god!

[polecat_redux]

I can think of at least one drug that's trivial to crack...

Re:No worries

[Performaman]

Mein Furher, I can type!

Re:If a hacker

[Johnathon_Dough]

unless of course said hacker's software was written by some one who thought no one could be that dumb...and started at 0000001.

Re:Reminds me ...

[EvanED]

Oh, I always used 123-1234567.

No wait... no I didn't...

Re:I can just picture world war 3 starting.

[ktheory]

"OMG! Why are the missiles launching?!" says the guy resting his elbow on the '0' key.

Re:maybe this is just the duress password

[cipher uk]

you have inputed the correct password. please stand on the large X to proceed.

Re:WOPR's 'guesses'

[MattGWU]

I'll thank you to refrain from posting my root password in this public forum.

Re:That's a really good password!

[DuSTman31]

Change the password on your luggage.

Dammit

[ed__]

now i have to change the codes on all my nuclear weapons :<

Combination locks

[Magus311X]

About 15 years ago, when our new computer labs were first opened, five key combination locks were put on the doors, with the access code set to the default.

15 years later and 5000 miles away on a continent on the other side of the planet, I'm on the walking trails beside our hotel and come across a gate on the boundary fence which has the exact same combination lock. And yes, it had the exact same access code.

Re:Hilarious

[Jane_Dozey]

Soooo, if your scenario (hacker working incrementally)and the password was set to 00000000 it would take how long?

Not Stupid

[dotwaffle]

If you're going to crack a password, what do you start with? Birthdays, anniversaries, dates of importance. You'd never think to try all 0's. It's too obvious. Nobody would guess it unless it was a brute force attack. It's actually remarkably clever.

I know the Universal Luggage Password!

[Anonymous Coward]

It's C-R-O-W-B-A-R :)

Re:WOPR's 'guesses'

[sydb]

Informative? Living proof that the moderators are now in the late stages of terminal crack cocaine addiction.

Funny, yes. I laughed.

Re:No worries

[Anonymous Coward]

You're a prevert. Ripper most likely found out about your preversion, and got caught up in a mutiny of preverts!

Another conversation

[LiberalApplication]

A few hours earlier...

Terrorist 1: "We have done it! We have infiltrated the missile silos! Death to the [insert appropriate derrogatory term for American]s! Victory is ours!"

Terrorist 2: "Mua-ha-ha-ha-ha! Let us hurry and launch the missiles! Wh... what is this?"

Terrorist 1: "It... it appears to be some sort of security mechanism... What do we do?!?"

Terrorist 2: "We have no choice. We must try every combination and hope to find the correct sequence before we are captured. We will start from '00000000' and count upwards."

Terrorist 1: "Are you insane? Even if we could test one sequence per second, it would take us tens of thousands of hours to find the code! Our fingers would be worn into nubs so short that we wouldn't be able to depress the launch button! We could even die of starvation first!"

Terrorist 2: "You're right. We've failed."

Re:WOPR's 'guesses'

[operagost]

It's like a computerized version of "Mastermind".

Sorry, incorrect password. The A, 3, and Q are correct, and in the correct position, while 2, Z and 9 are correct but in the incorrect position! PLEASE TRY AGAIN!

Re:The writeup is misleading....

[Anonymous Coward]

> a blank password so that you don't have to bother entering it.

what? Richard Stallman was working there too?

Self-Destruct

[Dachannien]

Zero-zero-zero was good enough to blow up the Enterprise, so zero-zero-zero-zero-zero-zero-zero-zero should be fine for causing a nuclear holocaust.

ono

[key nell]

the usa is building their own schwartzgerat!

Re:Someone's gotta say it

[netsharc]

You were at a party with stewardess, ehm I mean flight attendants..? Who cares about the war stories, did you score???

It's the same for Maniac Mansion!

[solios]

At least on the NES. The vault door to Fred's lab is locked by a keypad, and the combination is whatever the high score on Meteor Madness (second floor arcade room) happens to be. All you have to do is get the key to the outer door, get captured by Nurse Edna or Weird Ed, and get tossed in the basement before Fred plays Meteor Madness. Do this and the combination for the door is all zeros! :D

Found this out the hard way when I was a kid- I was stuck and didn't know where to look for the code, so I figured I'd brute force it (yes, I was BORED), and.... surprise, it worked on the first go. Found out it was tied to the arcade machine when I inadvertently closed the door and tried to open it again later.

Man, that game kicked all of the ass.

Kinda...

[maztuhblastah]

Kind of puts all those Windows buffer-overflow holes into a whole different perspective, doesn't it?

Re:who modded that insightful?

[ActiveSX]

It's factually inaccurate and overly simplistic.

From page 164 of The Glossary of Slashdot, 2003 Edition:

insightful (mod); ihn sait fEl
- Factually inaccurate and overly simplistic.

My God....

[AvantLegion]

... I protect my porn better than that!

Re:WOPR's 'guesses'

[MattGWU]

Ok. The thing is...that's not my ACTUAL root password. It's a joke. The thing about it is, that string is a perfectly good root password. It has letters. It has digits. It's not in the dictionary. It's not pronouncable. Therefore, it was perfectly cromulent to use it in the context of a root password. I twisted that into a joke by suggesting it was my root password, and expressing dissatisfaction that it was published to the world. How he came to get the root password, I have no ideas, as it was not, as I previously stated, my actual root password. Really, *any* of my root passwords.

Finally, the fact that this alledged 'root password' does not contain punctuation or non-printable characters was not held against it. It still works for the purposes of this joke. Lets hope they remain safely anonymous by not responding to this thread to express their outrage and incredulity.

My thoughts, however, go out to all the sysadmins out there who really DID have their root password outed this evening.

Thank you for your time, and have a pleasent tomorrow.

Re:WOPR's 'guesses'

[SEWilco]

Should we remind people of the /. Poll about passwords with the option "The Same on Every Account" [slashdot.org]?

In a related discussion someone pointed out thus /. knows the password of 6,510 people.

Re:WOPR's 'guesses'

[cgenman]

So that's how CmdrTaco is making his money...

Re:WOPR's 'guesses'

[rikai]

But there are several non-obvious ways to tell that some of the password is correct. E.g., a system may check the password left-to-right, and bail out when it finds a difference--in which case accurate and/or repeated timing can tell you how many digits are correct.

OK, since noone else has said it so far....

[ErichTheWebGuy]

Someone set up us the bomb!

More on Permissive Action Links

[ronys]

Steve Bellovin [att.com] has a fascinating page on the subject here [att.com]

The quote at the beginning has become one of my favourite metaphors for describing a process that should be close to impossible:
"Bypassing a PAL should be, as one weapons designer graphically put it, about as complex as performing a tonsillectomy while entering the patient from the wrong end."

Re:My God....

[AvantLegion]

aw, but you are not in Soviet Russia. ;)

Nope. In Soviet Russia, Devinn Lane masturbates to me.

Re:WOPR's 'guesses'

[tintub]

"Here everyone, r00t this guy."

That means something quite different here in Australia! I'll pass, thanks :)

Re:trust

[Dwonis]

The above post authorizes me to seize $10000 from ErikZ, because it didn't say I couldn't.

Re:WOPR's 'guesses'

[Ryosen]

Luxury! We used to get out of the dorm at six o'clock in the morning, clean the lab, eat a handful of 'ot HP-65's, listen to booooring Calculus IV lectures for twenty hours a day at the Main Hall for tuppence a month, come home, and Dad would thrash us to sleep with a broken Altair 8800 manual, if we were lucky!

And you try and tell the young people of today that ..... they won't believe you.