How Allan Scherr Hacked Around the First Computer Password 89
New submitter MikeatWired writes "If you're like most people, you're annoyed by passwords. So who's to blame? Who invented the computer password? They probably arrived at MIT in the mid-1960s, when researchers built a massive time-sharing computer called CTSS. Technology changes. But, then again, it doesn't, writes Bob McMillan. Twenty-five years after the fact, Allan Scherr, a Ph.D. researcher at MIT in the early '60s, came clean about the earliest documented case of password theft. In the spring of 1962, Scherr was looking for a way to bump up his usage time on CTSS. He had been allotted four hours per week, but it wasn't nearly enough time to run the detailed performance simulations he'd designed for the new computer system. So he simply printed out all of the passwords stored on the system. 'There was a way to request files to be printed offline by submitting a punched card,' he remembered in a pamphlet (PDF) written last year to commemorate the invention of the CTSS. 'Late one Friday night, I submitted a request to print the password files and very early Saturday morning went to the file cabinet where printouts were placed and took the listing.' To spread the guilt around, Scherr then handed the passwords over to other users. One of them — J.C.R. Licklieder — promptly started logging into the account of the computer lab's director Robert Fano, and leaving 'taunting messages' behind."
I wish he hadn't published this... (Score:5, Funny)
The next thing you know, cardpunches will be declared to be terrorist tools.
Re:submitter maths fail (Score:5, Funny)
Uh, uh. But now the DHS knows what he did...
Spreading the guilt (Score:4, Funny)
Back in high school our band performed at EPCOT, and that night, to keep all the kids in their hotel rooms, the chaperones put tape on each door. If a student left their room, then the tape on the outside of the door would be broken loose and they would get in trouble. However there was a fatal flaw. Late that night when we were sneaking around the hotel, we simply removed the tape from a dozen other rooms.
Re:I wish he hadn't published this... (Score:4, Funny)
A card punch launched from a trebuchet could do some serious damage. They are big and heavy.
Tell you what, though, the chad is an *outstanding* terrorist tool :) Going through the student keypunch room with a garbage bag, emptying all the chad bins, gets you enough annoying confetti to last a long time. Go through somebody's closet, and put chad in every pocket of everything he owns. Months later he will still be picking the stuff out. Sprinkle it liberally into the pages of various books. And 2 or 3 handfuls in the bed is always a winner.
My sister the artist still laments the passing of card punches. Back in the days of card punches she was into paper mache, and the chad makes excellent paper mache, and is zero labor. Just chuck a few handfuls into the paste and get to work.