Dial 00000000 for Armageddon. US’s top secret launch nuclear launch code was frighteningly simple R

[Echo_419]

For nearly 20 years, the secret code to authorize launching U.S. nuclear missiles, and starting World War III, was terrifyingly simple and even noted down on a checklist.

From 1962, when John F Kennedy instituted PAL encoding on nuclear weapons, until 1977, the combination to fire the devastating missiles at the height of the Cold War was just 00000000.

This was chosen by Strategic Air Command in an effort to make the weapons as quick and as easy to launch as possible, as reported by Today I Found Out.

Mushroom cloud: For nearly 20 years the secret code to authorize U.S. nuclear missiles was terrifyingly easy

Safeguard: This PAL device was meant to be attached to all nuclear weapons from 1962. But according to experts the military circumvented presidential orders by making the code really simple



The Permissive Action Link (PAL) is a security device for nuclear weapons that it is supposed to prevent unauthorized arming or detonation of the nuclear weapon.

JFK signed the National Security Action Memorandum 160 in 1962 that required all nuclear missiles to be fitted with a PAL system.

But nuclear experts claim the military was worried about the possibility of command centers or communication lines being destroyed in real nuclear war, stopping soldiers getting the codes or authorization to launch missiles when they were actually needed.

So they simply left the security code for the weapons as eight zeros, getting around the security safeguards.

Scene: The Ronald Reagan Minuteman Missile State Historic Site in North Dakota which could have been used to launch nuclear weapons

Dr. Bruce G. Blair, worked as a Minuteman launch officer between 1970 and 1974. He has written several articles about nuclear command and control systems.

In a paper called Keeping Presidents in the Nuclear Dark, he wrote that Strategic Air Command 'remained far less concerned about unauthorized launches than about the potential of these safeguards to interfere with the implementation of wartime launch orders.'

Incredibly, he also writes that the vital combination for America's nuclear deterrent was even helpfully noted down for the officers.

'Our launch checklist in fact instructed us, the firing crew, to double-check the locking panel in our underground launch bunker to ensure that no digits other than zero had been inadvertently dialed into the panel,' Dr Blair wrote.

Red button: A former nuclear missile launch control facility - firing the weapons needed the code 00000000




According to Today I Found Out, Blair wrote an article in 1977 entitled The Terrorist Threat to World Nuclear Programs.

This claimed that it would take just four people working together to launch nuclear missiles from the silos he had worked in.

That very same year all the PAL systems were activated, and the nuclear codes were changed. Hopefully to something more complicated than 00000000.
Launch code for US nuclear weapons was as easy as 00000000 | Daily Mail Online

Absolutely brilliant

 

[gslv]

Absolutely brilliant

bhai dilli walon ka apna self detonating nuclear weapon hai , Khujliwala.

 

[thesolar65]

Probably they thought what if all the persons managing code i.e from President to the Soldier suddenly catch Alzheimer's!!

 

[RescueRanger]

Very smart actually, Gibson covers this is more depth on his website:

Which of the following two passwords is stronger,
more secure, and more difficult to crack?

D0g.....................

PrXyc.N(n4k77#L!eVdAfp9

You probably know this is a trick question, but the answer is: Despite the fact that the first password is HUGELY easier to use and more memorable, it is also the stronger of the two! In fact, since it is one character longer and contains uppercase, lowercase, a number and special characters, that first password would take an attacker approximately 95 times longer to find by searching than the second impossible-to-remember-or-type password!

ENTROPY: If you are mathematically inclined, or if you have some security knowledge and training, you may be familiar with the idea of the “entropy” or the randomness and unpredictability of data. If so, you'll have noticed that the first, stronger password has much less entropy than the second (weaker) password. Virtually everyone has always believed or been told that passwords derived their strength from having “high entropy”. But as we see now, when the only available attack is guessing, that long-standing common wisdom . . . is . . . not . . . correct!
But wouldn't something like “D0g” be in a dictionary, even with the 'o' being a zero?

Sure, it might be. But that doesn't matter, because the attacker is totally blind to the way your passwords look. The old expression “Close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades” applies here. The only thing an attacker can know is whether a password guess was an exact match . . . or not. The attacker doesn't know how long the password is, nor anything about what it might look like. So after exhausting all of the standard password cracking lists, databases and dictionaries, the attacker has no option other than to either give up and move on to someone else, or start guessing every possible password.

LINK: GRC's | Password Haystacks: How Well Hidden is Your Needle?  

 

[VCheng]

Very smart actually, Gibson covers this is more depth on his website:

The headline is sensationalist, since the code, as you show, may have been more difficult to crack, although frighteningly easy to remember. Quite a difference, I would suggest.

 

[Arya Desa]

00000000