200 DEAR HACKER

200 DEAR HACKER

paper and pencil for scrap, and most of the time the proctor was either not in the room or not watching closely.

It would be trivial for somebody to sign up for the placement test (after verifying over the phone that ACCUPLACER is an option) at their local college, which may be free, and generally carries no obligation to actually sign up for classes afterward, and leave with a few dozen SSNs written on a scrap of paper in their pocket. All the person has lost are the two hours the test takes.

So who is to blame for this? Primarily, I would say it is a lapse in se- curity on the client machines. Disabling all Cache and AutoComplete features would fix the problem on the client end. However, you have to question the wisdom of ACCUPLACER using SSNs as identification for a simple placement test in the first place.

Just thought I would get the word out for anyone who may be getting ready to take their placement tests that, for their own security, they may want to avoid ACCUPLACER if given the choice.

MS3FGX

Dear 2600: I’ve read several of your magazines so far. I will admit I am not actu-

ally much of a hacker, but by reading your magazine I have become a little more aware of things that could be exploited. I was at the airport the other day and I was helping my grandparents get to their airplane by pushing their wheelchairs. I wanted to push them to the gate so I was given a special ticket. The ticket allowed me to go with them, while not allowing me to board a plane. There was one problem though. As

I was going through security, they only glanced at my ticket. Suddenly

I realized that one could take a picture of the ticket and edit and use it again to get back to the gate area, provided the edited copy was well made and the checker didn’t ask for the disabled person you were help- ing. I’ll leave it to you to speculate about how this could be dangerous. Even more surprising, when I left the airport, no one ripped up the ticket or had me throw it away. I could have taken it home, scanned it, and edited it to produce numerous tickets such as this.

TECHNOLOGY

The second thing I noticed were the payphones. I had an urge to fool around with the phones, but did not for fear that I would look like an idiot. However, I noticed that some of the individual areas where the phones should have been had been covered by a sheet of metal that was attached with some sort of weak adhesive. With relative ease, one could pull the sheets off the wall and get ahold of the cords that the phones had once connected to. Again, I’ll leave you to speculate about what one could do with a hole in the wall and potentially the cords that had once connected to the payphone. Thank you for your time.

Anonymous If they were the old fashioned Bell payphone lines, all you would be able to do at

most would be to use that line in payphone mode. If it was a COCOT line, there might be some other possibilities. But this is so frequent a scenario that it’s not that big a deal. Also, you would likely draw quite a bit of attention by pulling metal sheets off walls and connecting your instruments to the wires.

As for your first scenario, this is probably something the airport people would take seriously. But remember that it wasn’t too long ago when going to the gate with a passenger wasn’t anything to be concerned with. We’re not convinced that “world events” have changed anything but the paranoia level in various officials. After all, anything you could do at the gate if they let you through without a ticket could also

be done simply by buying a ticket. So where exactly is the increased security? We suspect it resides in a few minds but not in many other places.

Dear 2600: On a recent trip I had a layover in Houston. While at the airport there,

a lady came over the PA system and said “Threats, suspicious activi- ties, and inappropriate jokes will not be tolerated and will result in jail time.” I can understand the first two, but we can’t tell jokes now? Yes, you read that right; it’s apparently illegal to tell off-color jokes in an airport! Anyone know what happened to the First Amendment?

On the plane leaving Houston, I took the opportunity to experiment with the phone in the back of the seat in front of me (a Verizon service).