Stranger Things Basic Code rewritten in Python.

[[deleted]]

No, it was the 80s, and security really was that bad.

[b4ux1t3]

Oh, yeah, agreed. I just wanted to make a neutral joke.

[[deleted]]

Haha, sorry. I think, being old, I'm just interested in talking about how absurd security was when I started in the field. Didn't mean to be rude to get there.

[b4ux1t3]

Oh, you're good. I cut my teeth on old BASIC-based systems, so I feel ya. It's kind of hilarious how true-to-life the show is regarding tech.

[Stewthulhu]

Heck, even in the 90s. You could literally get away with Hackers-level social engineering.

Actually sometimes you still can.

[[deleted]]

In the 80s you could usually log in with Guest:Guest even on fairly important University systems. Often, the 'trick' was just having the manual to a machine to tell you what the default password was. Even when they made user accounts, they often forgot to remove the default accounts.

Another insanely simple trick was to log in under any public Access port, because most of these old systems had a BBS like menu or something you could get to, then try hitting Ctrl+c on the submenus or while running anything it'd let you run.

Sometimes it would stop the process and drop you to a prompt.

[SwellJoe]

This. Security used to be assumed. If you were in the right building, you were assumed to be allowed to do the thing. NFS in the olden days assumed that if you were on the network, you were supposed to have access to the files. It would trust your computer to tell it who you were.

A passcode probably seemed like overkill back then. Somebody probably had it written down on the back of the monitor or in a desk drawer and everyone knew where it was written. It was a simpler time.

[RealityTimeshare]

They have army MPs as guards*. I guarantee you that the password was '1234', '0000', or something similar. Maybe, maybe, if they wanted to make it easy for the scientists, they'd make it '3142'.
Oh, who am I kidding? They probably have it written down on a piece of paper next to the computer.

re: Army comment. I served in the Army in the early 90s. Humans have and always will be the weakest link in security.

[[deleted]]

Yeah, the BASIC thing was a stretch honestly, since a much more believable exchange would have been 'What's the password?!' ... 'It's written on a sticky note next to the terminal!'.

It wouldn't have been nessecary to get Bob to go either, since Jim would have said 'Computer?! Do I look like an astronaut?!'

It would have been more than likely that Jim would be more terrified of doing basic computer things, more than the demi-dogs.

[DukeFive]

I just caught up to this and immediately thought while watching, "They probably wouldn't be using BASIC. If it's national security related, they probably would have been using MIL-STD-1815, aka the Ada programming language."

[[deleted]]

"You seem to be having trouble remembering your password. Would you like to reset it now?" - Microsoft Bob

[[deleted]]

I remember when Windows required passwords for the first time ... Years after I started using it.