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NASA Hacker Gary McKinnon Interviewed 402

An anonymous reader writes "A BBC article reports about an interview between Click and Gary McKinnon who in 2002 hacked into NASA and other US Military networks. In the interview he talks about how he accessed machines by using default passwords and a conversation with a NASA network engineer using Wordpad. He also talks about how he found information about anti-gravity, UFO technology, free energy and how UFOs are regularly airbrushed out from high-resolution satellite images."
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NASA Hacker Gary McKinnon Interviewed

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  • Airbrushed UFOs? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Megane ( 129182 ) on Saturday May 06, 2006 @09:56AM (#15276635)
    and how UFOs are regularly airbrushed out from high-resolution satellite images."

    Like this one? [dvorak.org]

    (Yes, I know it's probably a water droplet on a high-altitude atmospheric camera, since there's a grid of them. Why wouldn't the "UFOs" airbrushed out by NASA also be weather balloons and similar artifacts?)

  • by FunkyELF ( 609131 ) on Saturday May 06, 2006 @10:16AM (#15276726)
    Agreed. He doesn't seem to be that technical.
    If you watch the video rather than read the transcript...the part where he mentions having searched 65,000 computers for blank passwords, he elaborates and says that maybe only 5,000 were alive and of that, maybe only 500 ran Windows and only some of them had blank passwords.

    The fact that he mentions targeting windows machines and having a conversation on wordpad with someone leads me to beleive he was usuing one of those Back Oriface / sub-seven things that were going around the time that this happened.

    Oh that brings back memories of living in a college apartment complex and using those programs. Having conversations on notepad, playing sounds through their computers at night, printing stuff on their printers. One girl actually thought it was cool and said she felt like Whoopie Goldberg in Jumpin' Jack Flash.
  • by Valdrax ( 32670 ) on Saturday May 06, 2006 @10:46AM (#15276864)
    Consider this: WHY would you show off your MOST ADVANCED technology if your LESS ADVANCED technology already IS SUPERIOUR to the adversarys?

    You've obviously never read up on the kind of technological fantasies the US military has. Despite your BOLD STATEMENTS that EMPHATICALLY use CAPITALIZED WORDS which make me DOUBT YOUR SANITY, the US military is completely and totally incapable of understanding the words "good enough." Even though our military technology can stomp on anyone on the planet, the Pentagon has long argued for increased capabilities against a phantom Chinese threat. They conjure up the image of China suddenly having tech on par with ours in 10-20 years as a boogeyman to justify bigger and fatter budgets for more powerful weapons.

    Second, the space program is a black eye for the US. It was a prominent sign of American strength and leadership that has decayed into a series of failures. It costs a ridiculous amount of money to send a space shuttle up and to deploy our many satellites. If we had alien technology, then we could half NASA's budget and accomplish the same goals. We could also cheaply weaponize space like the Pentagon always fantasizes about.

    Third, oil. We have a lot of shady alliances worldwide that revolve completely around access to oil. Take Saudi Arabia. We've known for decades that the Saudis are state sponsors of terrorist groups and have spent their money heavily to foment Muslim radicalism. We know that the majority of the 9-11 attackers were Saudis. However, we're still all buddy-buddy with them because of oil. If we weren't dependent on oil, we could pressure the country towards democracy or at least leave it as some sort of backwater of no importance and focus on developing more friendly allies elsewhere.

    Take Venezuela. The US government has long thought that the rise of Communism and Socialism in Latin America was to be stopped at all costs -- even to the point of toppling democracies for dictatorships. (I really, really hate this policy, BTW.) Venezuela is the vanguard of a new South American socialism movement, and it only succeeds because the state oil industry can support the entire economy. Guess what country is the number one customer of Venezuela despite our official dislike of Chavez? The US of course.

    Take Iran. Right now, our conflict with Iran over nuclear power/weapons is sending oil prices skyrocketting and hurting Americans. If we had free energy, then Iran would have no leverage. If we were smart, we'd give it to the Chinese and the Russians and remove the economic leverage that makes them veto UN resolutions against Iran, Sudan, etc.

    Oil blocks a very, very large amount of US foreign policy goals and make us have some goals that are very unsavory. Free energy would not only boost our economy, but it would make many of Washington's dreams possible. To say that we have it and aren't using it is to BLATANTLY IGNORE GEOPOLITICS.

    Then again, I don't expect to reach you with facts. For crying out loud, you post a link to a site which goes on about "Illuminati," "The New World Order," and "Chemtrails." If you can offer a RATIONAL explanation of why we have a greater interest in hiding technology than in using it, I'd love to hear it. Bonus points if you can explain why 100 years advanced military technology isn't being used in Iraq right now.
  • by 3seas ( 184403 ) on Saturday May 06, 2006 @10:54AM (#15276894) Homepage Journal
    It seems every so many years this sort of thing happens as a dumbing down of the general population.

    many of the posts here point out the flaws in what this guy presents, but if he really did hack into some classified systems and he is that dumb to not know how to save a screen image....

    what is he really saying?

    that even a monkey can hack into national security?

    Oh wait, didn't some research expose that a monkey was able to hack into the diebold voting machines???

    There are alot of people on this planet that know that so called alien life exist, technology more advanced than what we have created exist and even sources of so called free energy, etc. SO WHAT?

    The fact of the matter is that is NOT what we are doing with our time here.

    here is something else we are not doing, though we have the knowledge, man power and natural resources to do it
    and there is nothing hidden about it.

    http://www.unesco.org/education/tlsf/theme_a/mod02 /www.worldgame.org/wwwproject/ [unesco.org]

    since we can't even help ourselves, or don't show a real intent or effort to, then what the fuck useful is it to even acknowledge the existance of such advanced stuff?

    unless you just want to insult others.

  • by Rob Carr ( 780861 ) on Saturday May 06, 2006 @11:00AM (#15276926) Homepage Journal
    So, in other words, a fairly incompetent hacker managed to break into NASA and the military?

    Is this something NASA and the U.S. military should admit?

  • I BELIEVE HIM (Score:5, Interesting)

    by CranberryKing ( 776846 ) on Saturday May 06, 2006 @11:45AM (#15277113)
    I am seeing a lot of criticism but you are all looking for holes. Addressing those arguments:

    * The "hand moving accross".. he meant the mouse was then controlled by someone viewing the desktop who realized he was remotely controlling.
    * [possibly] that same person launched wordpad to type a message knowing he would see it, "who are you? what are you doing?"
    * He didn't save anything because he was just discovering it and didn't know what he would be looking at in advance. Then he was cut off.

    There is nothing unbelievable about his story unless you are still in denial that the governments are hiding free energy technology and awareness of alien life from the general public. If he has changed his story at all, it is probably because he is now contending with the fact that he may spend the rest of his life in 6'x6' concrete room in the US.

    Free Energy is the death blow to the entire class/economic system that keeps most of the world enslaved to 12 families. If we all had access to Free Energy, no one would have to "Earn a Living", we would just live (imagine that). The perfect example is when J.P. Morgan pulled all his funding and effectively shut down Nikola Tesla when he realized Tesla was working on a free energy system. He said (parapharsing possibly) "if it's free to anyone, where do I put the meter?". In a matter of years Wardenclyffe was being dismantled and we know how the rest of the story goes.

    Believe it.
  • by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 06, 2006 @12:46PM (#15277393)
    Society is finally realizing the horrible lack of scientific intellect among the population. The term 'free energy' is a turn off for any educated person in the sciences because it exposes that underlying fact that you have no concept of physics and the laws governing the universe. This isn't to say there are not technologies that would provide a substantial output in energy, like nuclear fission, but claiming it is 'free energy' is incorrect and preposterous. Furthermore solar energy is a miss understood concept as well. It is hardly the alternative energy source people claim it to be. Everyone fails to realize the fact that you can only draw so much current at any given point in time. Basically, solar panels don't put out much unless you have huge panels (I know, the tech is coming along, the company Nanosolar has made some nice advancements). Then if one wishes to store this energy you need some form of battery. This argument assumes we have all accepted the initial premise of each individual having their own set of solar panels. The scenario would be different if there was a power company with a grid of these things distributing the energy much like today. However my current premise is the argument I hear most often, so I will stay with it. With today's current technology this battery is very liking going to be a lead acid one, in which case would continue the 'environmental problems' because they must be thrown away every so often. Image all the landfills filled with these things, the environmentalist would eventually start screaming for the death of solar power realizing their original false premise. The whole point of this rant is for everyone to think a little before they buy into conspiracy theorist; use your mind and have a little faith in science. Yes, there are the possibilities of great advancements, but the conspiracy theorists have largely turned off the general public due to their inability to comprehend basic science. Note, this is one scenario of solar power; there are actually a few good applications for it. I needed a devils advocate point :) But certainly solar power is no holy grail; nuclear power is far cleaner and more effective. Look up advanced liquid metal reactor (ALMR) this is one promising alternative that could change people's minds about nuclear energy.
  • by zoeblade ( 600058 ) on Saturday May 06, 2006 @12:53PM (#15277420) Homepage

    Leaving conspiracy theories aside for a second, isn't it just as interesting and worth commenting on that several American military administrator users that are accessible over the internet aren't password protected, or that the same government is trying to throw this person in jail for sixty years for using these accounts, double what you'd get in the UK (the hacker's own country) for murder?

  • Yes, technological fantasies. It spent millions during the Cold War looking into remote viewing - a posh name for psychics. On a programme on the Discovery channel they did an experiment to test this - using a game of Battleships. The person who was just choosing squares at random was doing FAR much better than the guy who claimed to be psychic. But it's still utter rubbish.
  • Raising hackles. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 06, 2006 @06:47PM (#15278755)
    It seems that the media of most countries champion the deeds of its "hackers", even when they aren't worth championing, in a manner akin to boosting sports teams, etc. In this case the Brit media wants the world to believe that the UK harbours uber-genius computer hackers, when in fact they've just interviewed some no-nothing dick with a 'Hacking for Dummies' book balanced on his lap.

    Here in New Zealand the same thing happens: a few years ago an employee of one of the country's largest ISPs shared his staff login with his little brother. The little brother then shared it with one of his little friends, who then promptly logged in and randomly began deleting stuff, including many customer websites. Just another clueless n00b, yet the local media feted him as an 'unstoppable and deadly genius hacker'.

    Unfortunately the media know that they are lying to an audience willing to be lied to, since the unwashed masses thrill to hear that they have dangerous evil geniuses amongst them.
  • Re:Honeypots (Score:4, Interesting)

    by fatduck ( 961824 ) * on Sunday May 07, 2006 @04:44AM (#15280411)
    Oh dear...

    Next is SIPRNET. SIPRNET is ok for traffic up to 'TS'. SIPRNET is not physically connected to the civilian Internet. Anywhere. At all. You can't "hack into it" because there are no systems with both connections. That is verboten. They audit you to make sure you didn't do some dorky multihomed system with links to both. All the time. There's even rules about how close you can put a NIPRNET and a SIPRNET machine in the same room.

    Okay, let's see. SIPRNet packets are (often, not always) transmitted over civilian internet routers. Otherwise there'd be damn near no connectivity. There is no "secret internet" setup parallel to the internet backbone we all know and love. The only difference is you can only send/receive encrypted packets on SIPRNet. I'm not saying SIPRNet isn't secure, but it's a far cry from "totally separate." By the way, the laptop I'm on right now is sitting roughly 6-12 inches away from another laptop which is connected to the SIPRnet. There's nothing in 380-5 that mandates a physical separation between classified and unclassified systems.

    But wait, SIPRNET is TS at best. It has its very own web program called Intelink-S. SIPRNET has all SORTS of cool stuff on it, but it's been described as tactical instead of strategic and while I don't go surfing around just to see what I can get into (bad form) that's probably true.

    Actually, Secret is the highest level of classification authorized on SIPRNet. While just "surfing around" does violate the letter of the law as far as having a "need to know" to access classified information, I wouldn't say it's regarded as "bad form" by most. Actually, that's pretty much what I do all day. It's ridiculous to classify SIPRNet as "tactical" as it depends on what information you're trying to access. There's plenty of information at tactical and operational levels that are highly classified. Just because a unit is at the "strategic" echelon doesn't mean they're all cooking up ultra-top-secret plans for invading China.

    Then you have JWICS. JWICS is top level. It has SCI level stuff. You use Intelink-SCI. It has battle plan type crap, strategic level info. On JWICS the elder gods of They® reside, like Zeus on Olympus. You thought DISA was a biatch about SIPRNET. JWICS isn't the sort of thing you want due to the asspain level it brings you.

    Actually, most people use JWICS to make free phone calls from their Trojan Spirit truck. I guess I should have joined #mountolympus and talked to @[lol]HaDeZ aka Donald Rumsfeld. You're making it sound like you might accidentally open Bush's furry porn folder on the share drive but your ethernet cable (which has to be made of tinfoil to connect to JWICS, right?) will unplug itself and strangle you before you can watch any of the videos.

    Now, for the sort of thing our young Brit is discussing, data for SCI projects, that would be on JWICS, if it were stored on ANY accessible server. You would not be getting into JWICS. I can't imagine a more classified project. Hell, it's probably OVER SCI, whatever's up there in the security stratosphere. But it couldn't be less than SCI.

    Yea it's probably COSMIC TOP SECRET right cause it's about aliens! Aliens are way too cool just to be "Top Secret" right, that's boooorinng. PROTIP: Top Secret is the highest level of classification the U.S. Government uses. If they have some special project that needs to be more restricted, such as Project Alienware then they'll classify it "Top Secret/Alienware" and limit the project to a certain number of TS clearance holders. That's it. A lot more modular than a bunch of escalating clearance levels like "Ultra Top Secret" "Ridiculously Top Secret" "G14 Classified" and so on (discounting modifiers such as NOFORN, REL NATO, etc.)

    Like SIPRNET, JWICS is totally separate, it has NO physical connections to ANYTHING civilian. It's the sort of thing where they might monitor the

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