Cybersecurity required to prevent ‘war games’

©Mark Ollig

     

“A newly-developed computer communications network may revolutionize the future.”

This quote is from an article headlined “Computer Net For The Average Citizen” in the Jan. 12, 1973, issue of the San Rafael, CA, Daily Independent-Journal.

The article’s reference to a “computer communications network” was the Arpanet, which is today known as the Internet.

“Many people are concerned about the threat these systems may present to security and individual privacy. But those working on Arpanet feel these problems can be solved, and the solutions may not be very expensive,” wrote David F. Salisbury, the columnist for the 1973 article.

And so here we are, 45 years later, and those folks who expressed concern about online security back in 1973, were correct.

Contrary to the thinking in 1973, today’s cybersecurity solutions are costly, and usually temporary; requiring regular security updates to maintain protection against unauthorized access to computer systems and their databases.

The federal government is acutely aware it’s fighting a continuous cyberwar with computer hackers, adversaries, and “bad actors” who attempt to compromise the security of our government networks, military databases, power and communication utilities, transportation network, businesses, banking institutions, and individual privacy.

Internet of Things (IoT) cybersecurity also needs to be taken into consideration.

The growing number of new, smart IoT electronic devices in our homes and businesses connected to the internet directly, or via Wi-Fi, are vulnerable to being hacked into, and their intended purposes compromised.

Cyberwar is a real battle being waged against us on a daily basis.

The good news is we are fighting back.

The 2019 presidential budget includes $15 billion in funding for “cybersecurity-related activities” to safeguard computing systems, 101 federal agency computing networks, and databases used to protect our national security.

The department of defense will be using $8.5 billion of this budget for cybersecurity.

“Cybersecurity is an important component of the administration’s IT [Information Technology] modernization efforts, and the president remains dedicated to securing the federal enterprise from cyber-related threats,” stated the Cybersecurity Funding report located on the White House website.

In an October 1983 article, The New York Times reported the defense department had split the global Arpanet/Internet computer network into military and civilian use for security reasons.

“Network split to prevent ‘war games ’” is The New York Times’ headline for this 1983 article.

The network split limited access to university-based researchers and potential “trespassers and possible spies” who would attempt to breach a secure military computer network and cause havoc.

The original Arpanet linked together the defense department to 300 computers and 50,000 people in the US and Europe.

Military user’s non-classified information moved from Arpanet to a network called MILnet (Military Network).

MILnet later became NIPRNET (Non-classified Internet Protocol Router Network) during the 1990s, while the classified information network used by the Department of Defense has moved to SIPRNet (Secret Internet Protocol Router Network).

In 1983, many computer networks could be accessed using a personal computer with a dial-up modem, software program, and telephone number.

“All a person needed was the right phone numbers, and you could ride the network,” an anonymous Pentagon official is quoted as saying in the 1983 New York Times’ article.

I have a feeling, four months earlier (June 1983), this particular anonymous Pentagon official had seen the science fiction movie, “WarGames.”

“WarGames” is about a teenage computer whiz and hacker named David Lightman, who uses his computer and a dial-up modem for calling random telephone numbers and tracking those numbers, answering with computer modem “handshaking” protocol sounds.

He is attempting to find the classified telephone number for a specific company’s gaming computer.

One telephone number Lightman’s computer dials into and accesses is a North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) top secret, artificially-intelligent computer called WOPR (War Operation Plan Response).

WOPR plays out various nuclear attack war game scenarios between the US and the Soviet Union.

Lightman thinks WOPR is a gaming computer, obtains its secret “backdoor password,” and begins playing WOPR in a war game called Global Thermonuclear War.

He takes the side of the Soviet Union and activates its nuclear forces (not really), while WOPR obtains real control of US land-based nuclear missiles.

As the game progresses, WOPR prepares a counter-attack against the Soviet Union using real nuclear weapons.

WOPR begins a countdown to launch.

NORAD officials see a “Launch Detection” message (activated by WOPR) on their large, global monitor and believe the Soviet Union is launching nuclear weapons.

NORAD then goes to DEFCON 1 (DEFense readiness CONdition).

Meanwhile, WOPR has armed the US nuclear missiles and is minutes away from obtaining the classified launch code needed to send the missiles in a retaliatory strike.

Going back earlier in the movie, Lightman learned WOPR was playing the game for real.

He locates and convinces Professor Stephen Falken, the scientist who programmed the software for WOPR, to come to NORAD and try to stop the launch.

Falken and Lightman get WOPR to play itself in numerous games of Tic-Tac-Toe; which always end in a tie.

WOPR then “learns” the global thermonuclear war game is also unwinnable.

Just as WOPR obtains the launch code to fire the missiles, it suddenly stops the Global Thermonuclear War game and suggests “a nice game of chess” be played instead, thus avoiding a real World War III.

The 16-page US Government Cybersecurity Funding Report from the White House website is available via this shortened link, https://bit.ly/2GaWKeT.

The movie, “WarGames,” is available on Netflix.

October 1983 article, The New York Times

 Jan. 12, 1973 issue of the San Rafael, CA, Daily Independent-Journal

‘TESS’ to search the stars for exoplanets

©Mark Ollig

Don’t worry, mom, NASA is not sending you on a mission into outer space to find planets orbiting stars.

Let me explain; my mother’s name is Therese. My father began calling her Tess before they were married, and ever since, the local community has known her as Tess.

However, I digress.

Today’s column headline refers to NASA’s new Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS).

TESS will be on a two-year mission, monitoring 200,000 preselected nearby stars less than 300 light-years away from Earth.

It will look for conditions indicating planetary transits – a planet orbiting a sun as our Earth does.

Onboard cameras will be searching for temporary drops in a star’s brightness, which would be caused by a planet orbiting/passing in front of it.

Ground-based telescopes are unable to search this way; they instead look for a star’s “wobbling” effect caused by the gravity of an orbiting planet.

“The principal goal of the TESS mission is to detect small planets with bright host stars in the solar neighborhood so that detailed characterizations of the planets and their atmospheres can be performed,” stated NASA on its TESS webpage.

Positive, detailed findings from specific stars can then be followed-up for additional study by ground-based telescopes.

Wednesday, a 224-foot-tall, two-stage SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket fired its nine Merlin 1D engines and launched TESS into space.

The rocket’s powerful engines produced 1.7 million pounds of thrust at liftoff.

Falcon 9 lifted off from Space Launch Complex 40 at Florida’s Cape Canaveral Airforce Station.

Approximately 50 minutes after launch, the nearly 800-pound exploratory satellite emerged from the 43-foot-tall, 17.1-foot-diameter, payload carbon fiber-enclosed shell and obtained an elliptical transfer Earth-orbit.

May 16, TESS, using its propulsion system, will be in what NASA calls “an observing orbit in resonance with the moon.”

Its multiple Earth orbital paths will range from as close as 120 miles, to as distant as 168,000 miles.

TESS will remain in an elliptical high-Earth orbit, focusing its array of telescopes at stars and looking for exoplanets for the duration of its two-year mission.

TESS is more than just a satellite. It is a well-equipped spacecraft with thermal blankets for protection from the sun’s heat, and solar arrays producing 390 watts of electricity to power all of its systems.

The spacecraft includes a hydrazine-filled propulsion fuel tank, four charge-coupled device cameras with various lenses, a sunshade for protecting the cameras, and a star-tracker camera for maintaining its orientation.

TESS contains five orbital thrusters and a master computer, which controls all operations of the satellite/spacecraft.

NASA reports its antenna will transmit the exoplanet data it collects back to Earth at a speed of 100 Mbps.

TESS team partners include the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Goddard Space Flight Center, Ames Research Center, and Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics; Orbital ATK, and the Space Telescope Science Institute.

The NASA website for the TESS mission is https://tess.gsfc.nasa.gov.

The official Twitter handle for updated information about the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite is @NASA_TESS.

Photo credit: NASA/Kim Shiflett

T- 3.54 minutes until the launch of TESS!

1.13 minutes after the launch of TESS!

TESS 

Xerox could have owned the computer industry

©Mark Ollig


Which tech company created the first desktop office computer manageable by using a mouse-operated, graphical user interface?

Did I hear someone say Apple Computer’s Lisa computer?

The Lisa was available in January 1983.

The Microsoft Windows 1.0 graphical user interface program came out in November 1985.

We need to go back to the 1970s.

Back then, Xerox Corporation was best known for its copier machines.

In the early 1970s, inside Xerox’s Software Development Division, Xerox developers began work on a unique computer graphical user interface design.

Xerox researchers correctly believed future technology favored digital over analog, and so they developed the technology and software for integrating their copier machines with new digital computing technology, and began using this new system within their organization.

Exactly 45 years ago, April 1973, Xerox Corporation’s California Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) division completed work on its new desktop computer.

Instead of strictly keying in text at a computer command line prompt, the new Xerox computer also included a graphical point-and-click user interface.

This graphical user interface was navigated by using a three-button mouse. They called it the Xerox Alto computer.

As you probably assumed, the name, “Alto,” is from the Palo Alto Research Center, where Xerox developed it.

Xerox employees using the Alto computer experienced a dramatic visual difference when manipulating the display screen’s graphical images, scrollbars, icons, windows, and file names by clicking the three-button mouse.

The Xerox Alto computer used a portrait-presentation, 875-line, raster-scanned, bitmap, monochrome display screen.

Bitmap refers to how each pixel element on the display screen is mapped to one or more bits stored inside the computer’s video memory.

A bitmap display was essential in using the graphical user interface.

Alto’s programs were stored on 2.5 MB single-platter removable disk cartridges.

The Alto computer’s microcoded processor was a based-on Texas Instrument’s Arithmetic and Logic Unit (ALU) 7481 chip, and was equipped with 128 kB of main memory, expandable to 512 kB.

The computer’s processing components, disk storage units, and related systems were encased inside a small cabinet the size of a compact, apartment refrigerator.

Alto computers were connected to Xerox’s LAN (Local Area Network) using Ethernet – which Xerox had also developed at PARC.

The LAN allowed for the sharing of program files, documents, printers, office email, and other information.

The Alto computer included a 64-key QWERTY mechanical keyboard.

Another device for entering commands was a five-finger “chord keyset” device; however, this never became as popular with Alto users as the three-button mouse.

The Xerox Alto computer was designed to be used with its laser printers.

Software used with the Alto included word processors named Bravo and Gypsy.

Alto’s email software was called Laurel; and yes, someone with a sense of humor named the next version, Hardy.

Other software used with the Alto computer included a File Transfer Protocol program, a user chat utility, and computer games: Chess, Pinball, Othello, Alto Trek, and a painting and graphics program called Markup and Draw.

Xerox initially built 80 Alto computers. These computers were used within their corporate business offices and not sold to the public; however, Xerox did provide some Alto computers to university and government institutions.

In 1978, Xerox Alto computers were operational in four test sites, including the White House.

By 1979, almost 1,000 Alto computers were being used by engineers, computer science researchers, and Xerox office personnel.

In December 1979, Steve Jobs, who co-founded Apple Computer in 1976 with Steve Wozniak, visited Xerox’s PARC division.

Jobs was given a demonstration of the Xerox Alto computer and how it operated. He was shown locally-networked Alto computers using email, and an object-oriented programing language called SmallTalk.

It was reported, Jobs was very impressed when observing people operating the Alto computer programs with a mouse using the graphical user interface, instead of typing individual text commands on a keyboard.

“I thought it was the best thing I had ever seen in my life,” Jobs is quoted as saying about the Xerox Alto computer system.

“Within 10 minutes, it was obvious to me that all computers would work like this someday,” he added.

Steve Jobs was right.

In 1981, a graphical-user-interface desktop business computer called the Xerox Star 8010 Information System was made available to the public.

The same year, IBM introduced its desktop computer, called the IBM Personal Computer (Model 5150).

IBM had a historical reputation for computing, and its personal computers became extremely popular with businesses and the public.

As mentioned earlier, Apple released its Lisa computer in 1983; the following year, Apple introduced the Macintosh computer.

Throughout the 1980s, IBM, Apple, Microsoft, and smaller start-up computer companies, continued to develop and improve their computer hardware and operating systems.

However, it was too late for Xerox to become a competitive player in the emerging world of personal computing.

The public’s mind had already identified Xerox as being a copier machine company, rather than a computer company.

In 1996, Steve Jobs reportedly said, “Xerox could have owned the entire computer industry.”

Steve may have been right.

(Xerox Alto computer) 

Experience history and nostalgia – read newspaper archives

©Mark Ollig




I subscribe to a newspaper archive service, where one can search and browse through optically scanned, digitally-saved American newspapers.

While reading The Minneapolis Star newspaper dated Sept. 9, 1967, my eyes immediately caught the headline on page 15A: “Catholic Shocker: Mini-team Ties Cretin.”

“This headline is familiar. I remember someone talking about it years ago,” I thought.

The article featured a high school football team written as “Little Winsted Holy Trinity,” which surprisingly held the Minnesota Central Catholic Conference and state gridiron powerhouse, Cretin High School, to a 6-6 tie.

Cretin’s football team was expected to defeat the physically smaller Holy Trinity Trojans.

Winsted shocked everyone and held a 6-0 lead over Cretin going into the fourth quarter.

However, Cretin staved off defeat by scoring a touchdown.

Larry Anderson, who coached the 1967 Trojans (and was my football coach in the mid-1970s), said of the tie, “We should have won. We were in their territory several times, but just couldn’t punch it across. Then, we lost our big fullback, Steve Millerbernd with a shoulder separation. But we’re happy.”

This football game, albeit played nearly 51 years ago, is undoubtedly remembered by those who participated in it.

I know of one Holy Trinity Trojan football alumnus who did play during this impressive game – and he happens to be my older brother, Tom.

After sending him the newspaper article, I asked how the game ended up being a 6-6 tie.

He told me both teams missed kicking the extra point after their respective touchdowns, and when the game ended, the score was tied 6-6.

“That was a long time ago,” Tom added.

Reading through newspapers from the past, and finding a meaningful story like this was surprisingly unexpected.

Besides the memorable Winsted football game of 1967, I read archived newspaper articles about historical events, like the Apollo 11 moon landing mission in 1969.

How did people feel about astronauts landing on the moon back then?

The day humans landed on the moon, the Palladium-Item newspaper, published in Richmond, IN, quoted 87-year-old Ross J. Winchell, who said, “I believe going to the moon as the spacemen now are doing is all right.”

The newspaper also printed an opposing view by Teresa Herald, who said, “I do not believe that man is supposed to go to the moon. There are too many people here on Earth that are poor, and I feel the money we are spending on this one flight to the moon could be used to better advantage.”

The Apollo 11 lunar module, Eagle, carrying US astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, landed on the moon, Sunday, July 20, 1969 at 3:18 p.m. Minnesota time.

Both were walking on the moon’s surface later that evening.

While Armstrong and Aldrin were on the moon, astronaut Michael Collins remained in lunar orbit inside the command module, Columbia.

The following morning’s Minneapolis Tribune front-page headline read, “Two US Astronauts Walk on the Moon After Piloting Craft to a Smooth Landing.”

Photos at the top of the front page showed Armstrong and Aldrin on the surface of the moon, reading a memorial plaque and planting the US flag. Another showed President Richard Nixon in the Oval Office of the White House, speaking with the astronauts on his telephone.

After reminiscing about the moon landing, I searched through early-published Minnesota newspapers mentioning the word “computers.”

Combing through the archives, “computers” appears on page 3, Volume VII, Number 16 of the Mower County Transcript, dated July 23, 1874, and published in Lansing, MN.

The article describes the expenses associated with an almanac, reading, “For pay of computers and clerk for compiling and preparing for publication the American Ephemeris and Nautical Almanac, eighteen thousand dollars.” This sentence, written nearly 144 years ago, could be read aloud today without it sounding strange.

“Electronic Brain May Solve Major Civilization Problems” read the newspaper headline on page 10 of the Rocky Mount Telegram dated Sept. 18, 1949, and published in North Carolina.

The “electronic brain” the headline referred to was the Harvard Mark III computer, located at the University of Cambridge, in Cambridge, MA.

The Harvard Mark III electronic computer consisted of some 5,000 vacuum tubes, 1,500 crystal diodes, magnetic tape, and four magnetic memory drums. It cost $600,000 to construct; or nearly $6.2 million in today’s dollars.

The 1949 Rocky Mount Telegram article ends by declaring, “the United States is leading in the building of giant brains.”

If you are researching history, or want to experience some nostalgia, browsing through newspaper archives is a good place to start.

Happy 88th birthday, Dad. We all miss you.

The Minneapolis Star newspaper
Sept. 9, 1967