[Year 12 SofDev] If you leave your back door open you never know who might get in

[Walker, Michael A]

I take your mere email hack, and raise you. I remember an episode of Blue Heelers years ago (Season 9 – “Flushed” according to Wikipedia) based on the incident described in the below link, where a hacker used a backdoor he had either implemented or was aware of to take revenge on his former employer:

http://www.isssource.com/classic-hacker-case-maroochy-shire/

Be careful leaving backdoors open, you could end up drowning in…..

Michael Walker,
Doncaster Secondary College.

From: sofdev-bounces at edulists.com.au [mailto:sofdev-bounces at edulists.com.au] On Behalf Of Mark
Sent: Tuesday, 4 August 2015 2:30 PM
To: Year 12 Software Development Teachers' Mailing List
Subject: [Year 12 SofDev] If you leave your back door open you never know who might get in

(Stop sniggering. This is serious.)

Hi, disappointed sniffers of whiteboard markers

Another in my series of software development disasters.

As you know, programmers often include back doors in their code to allow quick and easy high-privilege access during testing.

Unfortunately, they don't always remove the back door from the source code before compilation and implementation.

This can happen to the smallest coders, and the biggest, such as Microsoft in 1999.

This famous example might be worth mentioning to the kids.


"The handful of lines of simple HTML code that constitute the exploit took advantage of a Hotmail login script called "start" that is not currently used on the Hotmail welcome page, and the password "eh."

"After examining that code early Monday, outside security experts suggested<http://www.wired.com/news/news/technology/story/21495.html> that the problem might have been a backdoor inadvertently left open on Hotmail servers by Microsoft engineers.

"Microsoft vehemently denied the backdoor suggestions, and instead described the problem as "an unknown security issue."
Read more at

http://www.omgfacts.com/lists/12538/Hackers-in-1999-discovered-a-flaw-that-allowed-logging-into-any-Hotmail-account-with-the-password-eh-ab731-3

http://archive.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/1999/08/21503

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outlook.com

http://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/1iv2jl/til_in_1999_hackers_revealed_a_security_flaw_in/


--

My woman drives me to drink. I have to walk back home.

Mark Kelly
[Image removed by sender.]
[Image removed by sender.]
http://vceit.com

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