23 Sep
1997
23 Sep
'97
7:29 a.m.
back then would at best give you three tries at the
password and drop you
and if you tried the account within 15 minutes you were again dropped and
the timer reset. The was to prevent cracking via successive tries. That
was an example of commercial systems, secure military would not even have
outside access that wasn't encrypted and highly secure.
Actually, the nerdy guy that ran WOPR said:
"There was an open line at our Space Division in Sunnyvale. The phone
company screwed up!" and
"He used a password left by the original programmer. Now none of our
guys even knew it was there."
Basically, the movie wasn't saying he had particular hacking skill. Just
that he got EXTREMELY lucky because he was looking for a computer games
company in Sunnyvale.
Anthony Clifton - WireHead Prime and Wargames Apologist