Skip to main content
kfitz

Like, Ghirardelli, or What?

We’re discussing Cryptonomicon right now in the Big Novel class,[1] and so information security is at the top of many of our minds. Imagine my amusement, then, when one of my students forwarded me this Enterprise IT Planet story:

Out of a small sample of 172 office workers that were approached on the street, more than a third (37%) willingly divulged their password when simply asked, according to Infosecurity Europe 2004’s organizers. Sadly, a large majority — a full 71 percent — forked over the information when bribed with chocolate.

Mmm-hmm. Stephenson’s links between contemporary hackers and World-War-II-era soldiers begin to make all that much more sense.


  1. Or at least those of us allowed to get out of bed are. (The whininess, you will note, is not passing.) ↩︎

Webmentions

No replies yet.