A Holiday Message

A Holiday Message

As I mentioned earlier, I refer here to an early RFC. The document in question is RFC 602: The Stockings Were Hung by the Chimney with Care. RFC 602 was posted by Bob Metcalfe in December, 1973. The subject matter concerned weak passwords. In it, Metcalfe writes: The ARPA Computer Network is susceptible to security violations for at least the three following reasons: 1. Individual sites, used to physical limitations on machine access, have not yet taken sufficient precautions toward securing their systems against unauthorized remote use. For example, many people still use passwords which are easy to guess: their fist [sic] names, their initials, their host name spelled backwards, a string of characters which are easy to type in sequence (such as ZXCVBNM).

2. The TIP allows access to the ARPANET to a much wider audience than is thought or intended. TIP phone numbers are posted, like those scribbled hastily on the walls of phone booths and men's rooms. The TIP required no user identification before giving service. Thus, many people, including those who used to spend their time ripping off Ma Bell, get access to our stockings in a most anonymous way.

3. There is lingering affection for the challenge of breaking someone's system. This affection lingers despite the fact that everyone knows that it's easy to break systems, even easier to crash them.