I Think We Have Passed Endgame

The merry crew from DOGE recently got read/write access to the code underlying the automated payment system of the United States of America.

That means they can/could have made changes to that system.

I haven't heard the level of chagrin and dismay I would have expected as a reaction to something that blindingly catastrophic.

At the top of the heap of concerns is that the system that has been compromised is the spigot from which Musk gets all his current, we hope legitimate, government payments; I wonder if there were any code changes to move some payments from his competitors accounts to his accounts?

Just a few lines added or deleted or changed?

Let's say that Elon exercised some self-control.

That would have been an astute act of long-term self-interest.

Because the only code that needed to be added is the simple addition of a back door.

A back door is a secret - known only to the coder - access point to a software system.

When Bell Labs engineers invented UNIX they put in back doors that allowed them to get into the operating system easily; that allowed them to make any changes that they needed to make and as the use of UNIX began to spread, and users asked for features, functions and changes.

That backdoor has bedeviled systems ever since right down to now.

That's because over time various versions of UNIX have been developed - Bell Labs made the code available to developers for a nominal fee - and have been widely adopted, right along with that original back door.

I have heard, although I can't be sure - that MS DOS, the progenitor of Windows has some UNIX guts.

That's why so much twenty first century code can be hacked and is constantly under threat.

So, add the payment system of the United States to the list of hacked code.

And Ol' Elon just sits in meetings sporting his trademark larval facade.