Chapter 2. Hazardous Material
November 14, 1980 (noon) - The phone rang at a desk at National CSS (NCSS) headquarters in Wilton, Connecticut. A woman answered. On the other end of the line, a voice asked jokingly, “What would you give for the [password] directory?”1 The caller was referring to the highly sensitive database on NCSS systems that contained all 14,000 customer user IDs and passwords. But it wasn’t funny—he really had the data.
1. “Event Report as of 1/21/81 08:45:30,” FBI file 196A-397 (New Haven), FOIA/PA #1364189-0, E3df34b6cc6c2a9a14ddc71e47c1a18b8d966c57f_Q3702_R343967_D1813129.pdf, January 21, 1981, 48 (obtained under the FOIA from the FBI; received March 2019).
At the time, NCSS was a top computer time-sharing company. A predecessor ...
Get Data Breaches: Crisis and Opportunity now with the O’Reilly learning platform.
O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.
