[Cryptography] GHCQ Penetration of Belgacom

[Dave Horsfall]

On Wed, 24 Dec 2014, Peter Gutmann wrote:

> For anyone interested in hands-on experience, we have one downstairs:
> 
> https://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/historydisplays/FirstFloor/IBM1620/IBM1620Main.php

Wow!  I think the University of NSW had one of those beasts, but it 
would've been before I turned up; I started my hacking career by breaking 
into their 360/50...  I think the magic instruction was "SVC 254", and a 
later version involved placing a magic number into R0 first.  No matter 
what they did, I was always able to get supervisor mode, simply by dumping 
the relevant portions of memory and disassembling it.

It was hilarious, having the computer operators handing me the SNAP dump 
of various bits of memory.  I was almost caught once, when I rewrote the
banner page to say "HAH HAH HAH", but they couldn't prove it was me (I 
think the statute of limitations is over now).

The crypto relevance ought to be obvious; a bored Computer Science student
can be a dangerous creature...

Does that sign really say "LET US PROCESH YOUR STATISTICS"?

-- 
Dave Horsfall DTM (VK2KFU)  "Bliss is a MacBook with a FreeBSD server."
http://www.horsfall.org/spam.html (and check the home page whilst you're there)