That’s … just … swell. You know those cool combo locks in nuclear missile silos in movies that would require the Official Codes to open, to keep stray intruders or disgruntled missile techs from launching an ICBM at the Russians?
Well, they were real, but in a move akin to writing your password on a Post-It note on your monitor …
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.
Yeesh.
The locks were actually activated in 1977.
Let me just say again, yeesh.
(via GeekPress)
Considering all the combo’s and passwords I had to remember at the Flats, I’d have been very happy to have had some things set to 0’s.
If security had just known that they could have done it, life would would have been so much easier.