IP: MSFT and our nuclear arsenal (fwd)

-- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://www.lrz.de/~ui22204/">leitl</a> ______________________________________________________________ ICBMTO : N48 10'07'' E011 33'53'' http://www.lrz.de/~ui22204 57F9CFD3: ED90 0433 EB74 E4A9 537F CFF5 86E7 629B 57F9 CFD3 ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 20:41:54 -0400 From: David Farber Reply-To: farber@cis.upenn.edu To: ip-sub-1@majordomo.pobox.com Subject: IP: MSFT and our nuclear arsenal

Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 19:40:36 -0400 Subject: MSFT and our nuclear arsenal From: Kai Lui To: Dave Farber

An interesting piece from the Washington Post if you haven't already seen it. Unfortunately (or fortunately), the specific MSFT software is not identified.

Kai Lui ------------------

Nukes: A Lesson From Russia By Bruce G. Blair Wednesday, July 11, 2001; Page A19

Although the United States spends nearly $1 billion every year to help Russia protect its vast storehouse of nuclear weapons materials from theft or sale on the black market, few Americans know how this aid helps strengthen America's own nuclear safeguards.

Russian experts at the Kurchatov Institute, the renowned nuclear research center in Moscow, recently found what appears to be a critical deficiency in the internal U.S. system for keeping track of all bomb-grade nuclear materials held by the Energy Department -- enough material for tens of thousands of nuclear bombs.

Kurchatov scientists discovered a fatal flaw in the Microsoft software donated to them by the Los Alamos National Laboratory. This same software has been the backbone of America's nuclear materials control system for years. The Russians found that over time, as the computer program is used, some files become invisible and inaccessible to the nuclear accountants using the system, even though the data still exist in netherworld of the database. Any insider who understood the software could exploit this flaw by tracking the "disappeared" files and then physically diverting, for a profit, the materials themselves.

Full article at:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A44053-2001Jul10.html

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