Security: Not a new problem

Here’s an OLD story about famous scientist Richard Feynman, who had fun cracking the safes of all his fellow scientists working on the Manhattan project in WW2:
http://www.cs.virginia.edu/cs588/safecracker.pdf (this is a long read best left for an evening at home).

What’s interesting is how easily you can draw parallels to the security issues we face today.  You could almost swap the word “safe” with “web application”, and “atom bomb design” with “financial data”, and the story almost carries over to today. These safes/filing cabinets contained documents relating to the atomic bomb (ie: something worth protecting).

To break the safes, he used:

• social techniques
• default safe codes
• known design defects

Sound familiar?  What’s funny, is the reaction to his activities was not to improve security, but to try keep him out of the rooms, and pretend the problem didn’t exist.