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Congressman's phone password is 111111

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Re: Congressman's phone password is 111111

#171
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can pass over the same point more than once which would obfuscate the direction of the original passes on the smudge.

quick somebody do the combinatorics on this

The number of unique paths is theoretically infinite since the path could be infinitely long, but there's obviously some software limitation on that.

Re: Congressman's phone password is 111111

#173
I worked for a well known company today, many years ago when it was smaller. When the IT team created new accounts for employees, it was the standard Pa$$word password for everyone. It was up to the user to change their password. They had no password rotating rules or requirements.

Anyway, many years later after I started, IT hires a person who wants to do good while in IT. This person discovers the CEO is still using the day one password he was given. The IT person decides to email the CTO, the director of IT, and the head of HR warning them the CEO is still using his default password.

I’m not clear what exactly the wording was, but the IT person skipping over the chain of command was bad enough it got them fired.

Re: Congressman's phone password is 111111

#174
post #140
post #78

And yesterday over a dozen members of Congress barged into one of the Congressional versions of this site without authorization and while recording video, audio, and taking photos on their personal smartphones. Here is a Twitter thread about why that is such a problem: https://twitter.com/MiekeEoyang/status/1187032800572125191

Please don't take HN threads into political flamewar. We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21344785 and marked it off-topic.

Just trying to be a better HN citizen, so is there something specific I did wrong here that crossed a line or is it just a "know it when I see it" situation? I didn't reference anything partisan and was simply relating a recent political event to both the general topic of poor congressional cybersecurity and the specific topic that duxup was talking about regarding securing a site from electronic devices. It was the response to my comment that was sparking a partisan flamewar.

Re: Congressman's phone password is 111111

#175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was just using an iPhone without a home button and you don’t need a passcode or facial recognition to use it. Just swipe up from the bottom.

I'm not sure I follow... You don't need a passcode or facial recognition to access any phone that doesn't have those features enabled. If you enable them you certainly do.

well, I'm replying to a person that said:

> I don't lock my phone at all. Never have. However, with the new iPhones that don't have a home button, I believe that Apple is forcing you to either use face unlock or a passcode. There is no choice to just leave it unlocked.

And I'm saying that you can use it without those features enabled; even on iPhones without a home button.

Re: Congressman's phone password is 111111

#176
post #10

I tell this story a lot. But I think in the time of smartphones and such it also represents the only real secure site I thought was truly secure from what I knew of it. This was before smartphones were common, but I think it was ahead of its time in that way. I worked for a company that occasionally would service some of our hardware onsite. One customer was a company that did a lot of work for the military and they…

wow, me working on FEMA's backups was no where near this secure.(no blinkfolds and guarded all the time inside)

But yea, same thing with them being well aware of your arrival before you show up.

It was their underground bunk backup site near DC, think it was Baltimore area. Drove up to a guard in front of chain link fence.

Re: Congressman's phone password is 111111

#177
post #10

I tell this story a lot. But I think in the time of smartphones and such it also represents the only real secure site I thought was truly secure from what I knew of it. This was before smartphones were common, but I think it was ahead of its time in that way. I worked for a company that occasionally would service some of our hardware onsite. One customer was a company that did a lot of work for the military and they…

A friend of mine had an amusing story about a visit to a secure facility. He was an engineer in the late '80s or early '90s at company that made some kind of custom text search hardware. He was sent to a customer site to do some service on one of the machines.

The customer was some government intelligence agency (he didn't tell me which one). The machine was in a small room, which also had a printer. To get to that room, you had to walk through a big room full of workers at desks.

Before entering that big room, his escort would press a button beside the door that apparently signaled to those in the room that an outsider was going to come through. That would make some audible signal in the room, and start some red lights flashing on the ceiling. Everyone in the room then had to clear their desks, putting all their papers in their drawers and locking them, and returning the most secret document to their safes.

When all that was done, everyone returned to their desks and then someone would open the door, my friend's escort would tell him to not look around, and would escort him through to the room with the machine. The door would be closed and locked, with my friend and the escort in the machine room, and my friend could work on the machine. Out in the big room, the workers would take their work back out and go back to work.

Occasionally, someone in the big room wanted to use the printer in the machine room. Before they could do that, my friend had to be escorted out of the machine room, back through the big room, and out to the corridor...going through that whole "secure the room so an outsider can pass through" procedure to get back out, and then to get back in after the printout had been retrieved.

Unfortunately, my friend had a lunch that day which disagreed with him somewhat, so that afternoon there were also a few times he needed to get to the bathroom, which of course required going through the big room each time.

Re: Congressman's phone password is 111111

#178

I don't lock my phone at all. Never have. However, with the new iPhones that don't have a home button, I believe that Apple is forcing you to either use face unlock or a passcode. There is no choice to just leave it unlocked. So, as soon as my iPhone 6s stops working, I will have to choose to: 1) Give in and use my face to unlock. 2) Use a dumb passcode like 000000. 3) Upgrade to the newest iPhone that still has a ho…

You can still choose not to have a passcode on newer iPhones.

That said, I have a really good friend that chooses not to use a passcode for their phone.

Somewhat irritating because being a really close friend we sometimes have very personal conversations via text, and the fact the they don’t lock their phone means I have to be conscious of that. These aren’t deep-dark secrets, but still personal things I wouldn’t share publicly.

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