NNSquad - Network Neutrality Squad
[ NNSquad ] 1983 TV News Video: "WarGames Movie" Hacking Fears Interview
1983 TV News Video: "WarGames Movie" Hacking Fears Interview
http://lauren.vortex.com/archive/000775.html
Greetings. Egads, it's time for the next installment from my archival
video extraction project ( http://bit.ly/bnARSi [Lauren's Blog] ) --
and an interesting item it is.
In the debut segment, "1983 Video: 'Captain Crunch' and 'Computer
Hacking' (TV Interview)" ( http://bit.ly/blSWd1 [Lauren's Blog] ), we
saw an interview triggered by network TV news' fascination with the
then recent Milwaukee "414s" penetrations of computers at Memorial
Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and Los Alamos National Lab.
Today we explore how a different television network in 1983, also
using the "414s" story as a hook, explored the question of whether the
scenario portrayed in the film "WarGames" -- coincidentally from that
same year -- had any possible basis in fact.
As with "1980 Video: 'Telefuture' - Everything Old is New Again!"
( http://bit.ly/bJWGia [Lauren's Blog] ), I have sandwiched this new
video segment with a pair of hopefully amusing, unrelated very short
clips (not necessarily from the same year as the main interview) that
were also recently extracted from my video archive -- including a
remarkable bit of political insight (?) in the closing clip
( http://bit.ly/9BssBE [YouTube] ).
The "WarGames" interview features a designated computer expert who
uses as "props" a TeleVideo computer and a modem near and dear to many
of our hearts, the venerable 300 bps Hayes Smartmodem (raise your hand
if you owned one!)
The computer and modem never really do much during the interview -- we
don't even get to hear any Touch-Tone dialing.
While the guest correctly and firmly disassociates the reality of U.S.
missile systems from the fantasy scenario of the WarGames film, he
oddly glosses over the "wardialing" aspects of (then current)
microcomputers and modems, and instead suggested that it was "simple"
with this equipment to iterate through all possible nine-digit "social
security number" passwords to break into computer systems.
Hmm. There are several comments I could make about that assertion,
but let's just say that plowing through nine-digit numbers (assuming
nothing stops you after a few incorrect attempts) still isn't much fun
even at modern Internet speeds, much less over 300 bps dial-up modems.
Like the lost Flying Dutchman, I fear that the particular TeleVideo
system shown may have been dialing continuously since that interview
was broadcast decades ago, still searching for its first "hit" -- oh
the pain, the pain.
So without further ado:
1983: "WarGames Movie" Hacking Fears TV News Interview:
http://bit.ly/9BssBE [YouTube] (~6.5 minutes)
--Lauren--
Lauren Weinstein (lauren@vortex.com)
http://www.vortex.com/lauren
Tel: +1 (818) 225-2800
Co-Founder, PFIR (People For Internet Responsibility): http://www.pfir.org
Co-Founder, NNSquad (Network Neutrality Squad): http://www.nnsquad.org
Founder, GCTIP (Global Coalition for Transparent Internet Performance):
http://www.gctip.org
Founder, PRIVACY Forum: http://www.vortex.com
Member, ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy
Lauren's Blog: http://lauren.vortex.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/laurenweinstein
Google Buzz: http://bit.ly/lauren-buzz