|
The
Pilot
Octium Chip
The Octium "privacy
issues" that Langly was doing the rant about are actually a
spin on something that happened in the computer industry several
years ago: early model Pentiums had features incorporated in them
that gave each chip a unique "signature." This would
have made it easy to do things like check to see if a certain
software is licensed to run on a particular machine.
Privacy advocacy groups raised a
real scream about this one and the features were removed.
"What's the
deal with the GPF (General Protection Fault)?"
Sorry, folks, but geeks are more
likely to have a basement full of old and orphaned computers than
the latest and greatest and one glance around the LGM headquarters
pretty much confirms that. The old machines and newer ones
are hooked into a network. This lets the old machines do
simple tasks so other computers can run faster ("print
server" or "fax server" are two jobs that they can
handle.)
Somewhere on that network
they've got an old machine with one of the most aggravating
hardware problems in the universe -- a bad memory chip.
You can run just fine with bad
memory until you get into something that needs a lot of number
crunching power -- like high graphics or decryption
("figuring out passwords") or a really crunchy
spreadsheet. This is when your machine collapses and dies,
muttering things like "general protection fault."
It usually eats some of your program files as it faints gracefully
to the floor.
The only way to find the chip
(location and segment) is to run special diagnostics that involve
lots of memory hammering -- and the guys obviously hadn't caught
this one.
So yes, it's a plot device, but
it happens -- just ask any network admin. In the middle of
all the number crunching the programs hit the flaky area memory on
that one machine and it started sending error messages and messing
up things.
On the whole, Langly was pretty
reasonable about it. I'd have probably kicked every machine
in the room out the nearest window.
"What's
the deal with bunches of computers needed to crack the
code?"
It's a special type of
programming (and it's NOT easy to do) that "distributes"
parts of a program to several different computers so that each
machine can work on a tiny bit of code at a time and they can all
finish one task quickly. Seti@Home
program does this, in fact.
"Why did
Langly need help cracking into the government computers?
Has he lost his mind?"
No, no, dears. Your favorite
studmuffin's rep for unparalleled kung fu is intact. Here's
what happened:
Hackers don't crack into the same
websites/computers all the time. They go in, make the tag, go out
and brag about it to their peers and friends.
When a sysadmin finds out that a
hacker's been in the system, they change their security setup and
plug all the holes.
Soooooooo... Langly had been in there
before but figures that the route he knew has already been
plugged. Kimmy must have been bragging recently about getting in,
so he may know a route that the admins haven't plugged up yet.
Rather than waste time,
Langly persuades Kimmy to replecate his latest crack. If the
route is still open, then he and Langly are in... if they plugged
the security hole then Langly can pull Kimmy off the crack and
finish it out himself. Either way, it's quicker than trying
to go through all the tricks to see what might be open.
Corrupt COOKIES?
That's pretty good
research on the writers' part -- one of the newer firewall
("keep hackers out") software/hardware combinations
relies on cookie technology to verify who should be on the system
and who shouldn't be there.
|
