“In effect the speed and capabilities of the computer were used to violate its own security,” Kukrall said in TeleSystems Journal.
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How the National Enquirer Gets Some Security along with Bargain Communications
Some National Enquirer reporters send in stories via computers, but there’s little danger of rival tabloids spying on the computer collecting the articles.
The reason? There’s no receiving computer, actually—just an auto-answer modem rigged up to a dot-matrix that spews out paper copies at several hundred words a minute.
The modem and printer can’t send messages or relay stories elsewhere. But who needs that—not when some computer-smart National Star reporter might give his eye teeth to find out what the competition is up to?
To be sure, the scheme has some problems:
● The Enquirer can’t transfer the reporters’ stories to a computer there for editing, since they are on plain old paper but not in an electronic format. Editors, however, heavily rewrite the original stories. Capturing reporters’ key-strokes for the typesetter wouldn’t help as much as at an ordinary newspaper.
● Theoretically someone could still steal the hard copy (just as he or she could sneak off with a floppy disk).
● The system isn’t secure against telephone tappers who could translate the modem whines.