The Trap-Door Trick
A trap door—or back door—normally is just a shortcut into the program, bypassing the normal security systems, meant as a debugging aid. Once the writers have a program up and running, they should get rid of the door. Large programs are so complicated that programmers sometimes leave the doors in as an emergency way for them to get back in if the main passwords are lost or the computer “hangs up.” David Lightman, the teenage hacker in the movie WarGames, used the trap-door ploy to penetrate a Defense Department computer and almost caused a nuclear Armageddon.
In a real-life example mentioned by Parker, some automobile engineers in Detroit called up a computer service bureau in Florida, found a trap door, and could “search uninhibitedly” for privileged passwords.
“They discovered the password of the president of the time-sharing company and were able to obtain copies of trade-secret computer programs that they proceeded to use free of charge.”
The electronic thievery didn’t stop until the company found out accidentally. And it never learned how many other crooks were rummaging around inside the computer.
Once again, this form of crime isn’t so much a worry for the desktop set as for those using bigger machines. At least for now.
The Logic Bomb
Heard the old joke about the Washington speech writer at odds with his boss? It’s a favorite story among journalists and other wordsmiths.
The aide was tired of drudge work for a dumb, lazy but electable congressman who didn’t even read the immortal prose ahead of time.
One day the politician, a square-jawed, movie-actorish man, was mellifluously speaking on the House floor. As usual, he was fresh to the material. But his rendition overwhelmed everyone, from the pols to the pages, to the tourists in the galleries. He knew he was on his way to the White House.