Questions of War Games--Journal/Blog Entry #2

   We had watched a interesting movie on the Monday which called War Games.  Although it has a very science-fiction story, it revealed a lot of problems regarding to the internet and computer at that time which is still relevant today.  Especially today, people are more and more aware that internet security and internet privacy are very important, since almost half of the world is using the internet.  However, no matter how good we are at defense, people always find a way to get around the defense or even destroy it.  Lets discuss what are the differences and similarities between today's world and War Games world.

   

   Nowadays, we don't use phone calls to connect to the internet any more.  Instead, most of us use cable internet access and digital subscribe lines.  The cable internet access use the line which originally designed to connect television signal.  Basically,  we can connect to the internet via a modem which connected with a television cable.  The digital subscribe line is different.  It uses telephone line which is similar to dial-up connection, but without occupying the phone connection.  It means people only need one telephone line for both internet connection and telephone use.  I use digital subscribe line at home.  Although there are many more methods to conned to the internet, such as FTTH, BPL, etc., the most common wire connections we are using are those two.  We also use Wi-fi and 4G for wireless connection.

   

    The giant computer, WOPR, in the movie is called supercomputer.  It exists in many countries around the world. They were designed to process an enormous amount of information which normal computers have no capability to do so.  The information they process a day requires a personal computer running endlessly for decades to solve.  It's a powerful tool which can be used in terms of research, military purpose, decryption, and more.

Tianhe-2, The most powerful supercomputer, designed by National University of Defense Technology, China.

 

    In the movie, it seems like WOPR could communicate with people like a human.  We have developed a way allowing a computer to study the human's way of thinking and learning.  It is called artificial neural network.  This technology was inspired by the way nervous work in our brain. Computers which use this technology are able to drive a car, to judge an article, to identify a particular photograph.  This technology has been applied in many fields, like google search engine, email spam filtering, etc..

    

    However, hacking into a computer is not as easy as in the movie. David was able to see the password of school server in the drawer of his school office. Yet, we are smarter now.  We don't put passwords around to let people to find out.  Hackers often use Trojan Horse or system weak point to hack into a computer system.  Trojan Horse is a software that serves like a back door.  If your computer downloaded it in the system, it will automatically install and run quietly, without notifying you.  It will recall all the passwords you entry and sent it to the hacker.  Also, back door hacking is also possible.  Many manufacturers of computer left a back door in the hard drive for maintaining purpose.  Like BIOS backdoor password allows other people to bypass your BIOS password.  Even system has back door.  In addition, social engineering is used by hacker to get information from people they want to hack.  A Hacker can use this information to guess target's password. 

  

   As we can see, as technology developed, we achieved many things that we thought that we unable to achieve.  Some of ideas in the movie were purely a fiction.  However, we face the same problem as before.  How to keep our information safe and protected is still a question for all of us.