< Vol.1 >
The day when the safety myth was broke down
Completely vanished
The hacking happened suddenly. That was in the 11th year after I took
the chief post of the secretariat of COARA. COARA is the office of the
personal computer communication Internet service.
At 4:55 a.m. on April 12th, it was 30 minutes later than usual, I tried
to access to the Internet by way of COARA from my house, but I couldn't.
There was no answer though the machine was in good running order.
Something is wrong! There is something unusual.
Connection with Internet was wrong, while the part to communicate with
personal computer was in good running order. I felt irritation while
I waited for technicians attendance. I phoned and instructed them to
investigate, at 8:30 a.m.
At 9:10 a.m., suddenly a technician called and said
" It's emergency."
when I had a visitor.
"I'm afraid the system of COARA was broken. The data were completely
vanished."
For a moment, I couldn't understand what he meant. But when he went on
saying,
" It is possible that an outsider erased it. ",
I came to myself. I excused myself from the meeting , ran up to
secretariat of COARA.
We couldn't get back
We announced the first explanation on personal computer communication
network which went as usual at 9:45 a.m. and 10:15 a.m.
" Emergency notification. Warning. The part of the Internet was
broken.It is possible an outsider did it. In that case, it is in danger
of being stolen the password file written in cipher before they were
erased, and being deciphered by a large-sized computer."
The investigation going on, it became clear of the damage. We regularly
stored the back up data of the homepages in the COARA's host computer, so we
would be able to restore them if we went back to one month before. But we
didn't have data which was newer than that, so getting back perfectly was
difficult. It also turned out that we couldn't restore the private electric
mail.
Registering 2000 members data again
There are about 2000 members using the Internet by way of the COARA,
and they can't do anything without it. We had to reopen our service
as soon as we could.
All of the staff looked at me. Cheerful lively women staff were tense.
What should I do?
" Now, we should apologize for vanishment the data frankly, and register
new passwords of 2000 members again!"
In no time, they made a move with might and main. We announced about the
case on the personal computer communication network at 11:30 a.m.
Anyway we built the new computer system again, made new passwords of
2000 members, and printed and packed them individually.
Sending work before dawn
The staff shared the part, and made up a assembly line with answering the
complain by phone. Tension and noise. And no one knew the end.
At 11:30 p.m., they brought the first several hundreds mails to the post
office. They went back home at 4:30 a.m., and promised to come back next
11:00 a.m. All of the work finished at 11:30 p.m. of the next day.
That was the first big hacking which threatened us. And we had never
had such a trouble before.
"The safety myth of Japanese computer network"
was vanished from my mind, as well as
"Break down of the safety myth of Japan, the myth of bank, and the myth
of bureaucracy".
written by Tooru Ono, the chief of the NEW COARA secretariat
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