Hacking 2000 years from now...

cthia wrote:In any complicated system, as it grows even more complicated threatens to become more vulnerable, because with each iteration of complication causes you to lose a bit of control. So you engineer in a cutout. Which makes it vulnerable. Again, it is the ever present human element. If you don't design with this element in mind, then you'll fall prey to it, because everywhere you are, there it is.

E.g., what happens if the premise of this thread bears fruit and "voila" a completely secure system? There are implications.

Scenario, suddenly our government is locked out of their main computers. Some idiot forgot the password. And this time, of course, he decided to heed your warning about writing it down.

The [reset] and [power] buttons act somewhat like cutouts now.

My niece rang me and added...

An unforeseen implication of defeating Godel and the halting problem and using it to design a completely secure system, are the powerful A.I. programs that will instantly become a possibility. Suddenly a coder can write programs to test its own validity and that entails being able to design programs which can break into any system and the A.I can prove its validity.

What happens when a completely secure system that is "proven correct" and written by an A.I. * goes up against an A.I. system written to be "foolproof in compromising other systems" and proven correct by the A.I.

In other words you have an impenetrable system going up against... itself.

* Essentially a computer with this type of programming, programmed by Richard Pryor, was used to analyze and find the weaknesses and to kill the impenetrable Superman. The human element is ultimately what saved Superman, IIRC. Richard Pryor couldn't stomach the thought of being the one who killed Superman.

Weird Harold wrote:

kzt wrote:I suspect it's exceptionally hard to do it from a SSH session.

The F-4 was a 1950's design, and despite digital upgrades, it was never really "connected" the way drones and fly-by-wire aircraft are today. Of course they were hard to "hack" without physical access.

The point I wanted to make is that "safety interlocks" are easy to bypass for maintenance and/or malice. I expect that the requirement for maintenance to be able to duplicate malfunctions hidden by safety interlocks is going to persist as long as maintenance is required on technology.

Yet another clarification and example of the human element. With sudden great power comes great respect. Another level of security for the F-4 Jets were the guards stationed at the gates. Because no matter how secure a system is, you must allow its operators power over it to remain practical.

Or you'd need to have the mechanics responsible for maintenance on the jets having to send for top brass to enter his personal key into the machine, turning it and executing a few commands -- like some cashier at a checkout.

There should be a warning on all products, not safe against Murphy and the human element.

We are at the mercy of our own logic. Man truly has the ability to think himself into a corner.

We are what we eat, except what we think. This is why only a God should create life, because if any error in programming, be a very dangerous beast indeed.

Also take a aircraft in use, like the F-15. If one didn't care, could one not start the engines and go to full afterburner while still below deck on a carrier? Sure it would not sink the carrier, but it would likely do enough damage to put in out of action.

-Steven

ZVar wrote:Also take a aircraft in use, like the F-15. If one didn't care, could one not start the engines and go to full afterburner while still below deck on a carrier? Sure it would not sink the carrier, but it would likely do enough damage to put in out of action.

-Steven

Except that I don't think there's ever been an F-15 on a carrier, except maybe the museum carrier (can't recall the name) - hell, they put an SR-71 on it, so why not an F-15?

As for the INTENT of your question, sure, you could do it, but it would take quite a bit of effort, and would require emptying the hangar deck of any and all personnel that would have any knowledge of what you're attempting to do, because otherwise, they slam your ass to the deck as hard as possible to keep you from doing that.

There are several ways to start a jet engine, and most of them require someone in the cockpit, and someone outside the aircraft. Some of the equipment needed to start an engine is the same as what is needed for certain maintenance jobs, and I'd be willing to bet that any sort of job on a carrier that required that equipment would be done on the flight deck. Meaning that if anyone saw you hooking up any of that stuff belowdecks, you would again get hammered to the deck, and probably keelhauled, just to make sure you got the point - which is why I said that you would need to clear the entire hangar deck of anyone who knows anything about the aircraft, because I guarantee that everyone there has had safety training.

As for damage, I'd also be willing to bet that a plane in full afterburner in the hangar deck would do much less damage than you think. Those suckers are armored, to withstand both battle damage and accidents. I'd think it would only put the carrier out of action long enough to sweep up the mess and fly in some new planes.

MaxxQ wrote:There are several ways to start a jet engine, and most of them require someone in the cockpit, and someone outside the aircraft. Some of the equipment needed to start an engine is the same as what is needed for certain maintenance jobs, and I'd be willing to bet that any sort of job on a carrier that required that equipment would be done on the flight deck. Meaning that if anyone saw you hooking up any of that stuff belowdecks, you would again get hammered to the deck, and probably keelhauled, just to make sure you got the point - which is why I said that you would need to clear the entire hangar deck of anyone who knows anything about the aircraft, because I guarantee that everyone there has had safety training.

As for damage, I'd also be willing to bet that a plane in full afterburner in the hangar deck would do much less damage than you think. Those suckers are armored, to withstand both battle damage and accidents. I'd think it would only put the carrier out of action long enough to sweep up the mess and fly in some new planes.

Probably all true. And hopefully unlike in the USS Forrestal fire back in the Vietnam war there wouldn't be armed up planes around (I'm assuming bomb and missile loading is done on the flight deck, not in the hanger bay). But even if there were the bombs and missiles would hopefully all be the newer more heat resistant models and not the old Comp B filled bombs Forrestal had gotten. (Cause baking a bomb too long in the flames from an afterburner seems like a bad idea)

But things go wrong; that was a single inadvertently fired Zuni rocket that caused a chain reaction that killed 134 and caused over $72 million in damage. (However wasn't even close to sinking the ship)

I thought F-15's flew off all the time... Looked it up, nope was thinking of the F-18. Tells you what I know of our planes in service. Oh well, my dad worked at Lockheed on the F-16 so it's the only fighter I know much about, and then most of that is from a couple times they had a family tour of the plant.
Oh, also a little of the F-22, for the same reason.

MaxxQ wrote:As for damage, I'd also be willing to bet that a plane in full afterburner in the hangar deck would do much less damage than you think. Those suckers are armored, to withstand both battle damage and accidents. I'd think it would only put the carrier out of action long enough to sweep up the mess and fly in some new planes.

The fire suppression system would do a number on the running engine....

In the movie Crimson Tide, the subs missile launch system (the business with the keys) is designed as a security against unauthorized launches and also as an assurance that authorized launches would go off without a hitch. Perhaps that was just too much scope.

*The human element reared its ugly head and the launch that technically should have happened didn't. Or the launch that shouldn't have happened didn't. How can the programming of a completely safe system ever be considered absolutely true if — for the programming "on the spot" — the human element is what is needed to make the ultimate call? How do you write that subroutine? If Gödel and his accomplice is defeated and the capability of this thread's premise sees the light of day, then we have become Gods and have programmed into computers the human element. Anything else would just be fuzzy logic. We've essentially created life.

*The human element manifested itself in both Gene Hackman gone power crazy and then again with Denzel Washington failing to insert the key. Denzel could have been wrong.

Perhaps Gödel and the Halting problem are intentional cutouts designed into man's world by an omniscient being.

https://youtu.be/7gzjW9jpJYE

All those sort of systems are able to be bypassed by an expert who isn't trying to be subtle or sneaky or worried about someone trying to stop them. Until you get the the actual PAL inside the weapon, which would be very damn hard to work on given that it's inside a sealed warhead inside the sealed aerodynamic fairing inside a sealed launch container iniside a sealed steel tube whose door is held closed by many tons of water pressure.

Luckily the crew has the full launch codes, so they don't need to do that if everyone on board agrees it's time for Beijing to die.