Safety First???
I'll admit. I'm a little jealous that Johndan is able to take time off from the Net right now. Wish I could do the same. . .
But then again, I wouldn't have found this little tidbit via
Slashdot included in a post at the Center for Defense Information. It's enough to make your hair stand on end. As
Bruce Blair explains when talking about the security locks for the Minuteman missiles,
"The Strategic Air Command (SAC) in Omaha quietly decided to set the “locks” to all zeros in order to circumvent this safeguard. During the early to mid-1970s, during my stint as a Minuteman launch officer, they still had not been changed. Our launch checklist in fact instructed us, the firing crew, to double-check the locking panel in our underground launch bunker to ensure that no digits other than zero had been inadvertently dialed into the panel. SAC remained far less concerned about unauthorized launches than about the potential of these safeguards to interfere with the implementation of wartime launch orders. And so the “secret unlock code” during the height of the nuclear crises of the Cold War remained constant at OOOOOOOO."
So for all of those people still using "123" as their password, or some other easily guessable series of numbers, know that you are historically in the good company of our Strategic Air Defense.
Posted by at May 29, 2004 11:40 PM
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