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Sark Defends Port Deal

Sark today sought to quell the growing controversy over his decision to grant the MCP control of several major ports throughout the region.

“I believe that this arrangement with the Master Control Program should go forward,” Sark told reporters aboard Solar Sailer One. He emphasized that security would continued to be handled by Tank and Recognizer programs, with the MCP only be in charge of port operations.

But Dumont, guardian of the I/O towers, voiced skepticism. “I could understand ceding authority over ports 21 and 80,” said Dumont. “But port 443? That’s supposed to be secure!”

The public’s reaction to the plan has also been overwhelmingly negative. “No no no,” said a bit upon hearing the news. “No no no no.” Others were more blunt. “Sark should be de-rezzed for even proposing this,” said Ram, a financial program.

Sark, who has repeatedly denied having ties to the MCP, has insisted that the hand-over go through, and says that he will vigorously resist any effort to block it. But programs such as Yori are equally adamant that the deal be scuttled. “My User,” she said, “have we already forgotten the lessons of 1000222846?”

Tags: computer security, humor, network security

Posted on February 27, 2006 at 6:12 AM • 20 Comments

Comments

winter • February 27, 2006 6:50 AM

Excellent article as always.
hey… isn’t Sark one of the bad guys from the TV show ALIAS? Coincidence?

D • February 27, 2006 7:15 AM

It took me until the phrase “Master Control Program” to get it.

Great. Heh.

Sencer • February 27, 2006 9:02 AM

Tron is alive and well! 🙂

But man, discussing National Security in terms of Disney characters to get the point across… feels funny, doesn’t it?

Rounin • February 27, 2006 9:36 AM

Wasn’t Sark the guy on Alias with no loyalties to anyone but himself? 😉

Randy • February 27, 2006 10:46 AM

Sweet. How many in the community are old enough to get the reference. One of the earliest “hacker” movies.

mark • February 27, 2006 11:09 AM

Yes I’m old. Old enough to remember when the MCP was just a chess program!

Fred F. • February 27, 2006 11:23 AM

Well who is old enough to remember that MCP was an actual OS? I think it was Burroughs or one of those old ancient mainframe manufacturers

piglet • February 27, 2006 1:32 PM

Port Security from a different angle:

“Osama, Saddam and the Ports, by Paul Krugman, Commentary, NY Times: The storm of protest over the planned takeover of some U.S. port operations by Dubai Ports World doesn’t make sense viewed in isolation. The Bush administration clearly made no serious effort to ensure that the deal didn’t endanger national security. But that’s nothing new — the administration has spent the past four and a half years refusing to do anything serious about protecting the nation’s ports… Now comes the ports deal. … after all those declarations that we’re engaged in a global war on terrorism, after all the terror alerts … the administration can’t suddenly change its theme song to “Don’t Worry, Be Happy.” … This isn’t just a Middle Eastern company; it’s … part of the authoritarian United Arab Emirates, one of only three countries that recognized the Taliban as the legitimate ruler of Afghanistan. … [A]fter years of systematically suggesting that Arabs who didn’t attack us are the same as Arabs who did, the administration can’t suddenly turn around and say, “But these are good Arabs.””

http://pkarchive.org/

arl • February 27, 2006 2:30 PM

B5000 series ran MCP. It was a great computer. Google the name, it was (is) an interesting computer.

Arik • February 27, 2006 2:30 PM

“My User”

shouldn’t it be ‘My Programmer”?

— Arik

marco • February 27, 2006 3:07 PM

MCP is still used on some Unisys machines, although I’m sure it’s much changed from the version I used on Burroughs hardware in the ’70s.

http://www.unisys.com/products/clearpath__servers/index.htm

Thomas Sprinkmeier • February 27, 2006 4:35 PM

‘”No no no,” said a bit’

Obviously a misquote.

A bit would have said either “yes” or “no”.

Nick Lancaster • February 27, 2006 4:59 PM

The bit was not misquoted. IIRC, the bits fed a continual stream of their current setting.

Nathan Jones • February 27, 2006 5:59 PM

% epoch 1000222846
Wed Sep 12 01:40:46 2001

Dossy Shiobara • February 27, 2006 6:11 PM

Nathan Jones:

% clock format 1000222846
Tue Sep 11 11:40:46 AM EDT 2001

What is “epoch” and why is it buggy? 🙂

joe • February 27, 2006 6:15 PM

Funny how the whitehouse appears to be selling large US infrastructure to foreign government controlled corporations… Wasn’t it just last year that CNOOC had Whitehouse support to buy Unocol? Besides selling nuclear technology to India what else is left to check the trade balance and prop the dollar? Sell NASA?

Nathan Jones • February 27, 2006 7:36 PM

@Dossy:

“What is “epoch” and why is it buggy? :-)”

Whoops – I was forgetting about time zone differences. “epoch” is my shortcut for:

#!/opt/local/bin/perl
print scalar localtime ($ARGV[0]), “\n”;

Now that I think about it, Wed Sep 12 01:40:46 2001 in Australian EST is just about right…

Jay Maynard • February 27, 2006 9:36 PM

Bwahahahahaaaaa….

Kevin Flynn • February 28, 2006 3:06 AM

The character from Alias was indeed Julian Sark. I’m fairly sure it was a coincidental naming choice. If J.J. Abrahms wanted to make a Tron reference, he’d probably do it through Marshall.

Not like it was hard to defeat the MCP, though. If I could get inside, I could forge us a Group 6 access. The password is: reindeer flotilla.

Panda • February 28, 2006 2:04 PM

Just a thought but perhaps you’d like to take a peek at this article I found:

http://movingdog.blogspot.com/2006/02/port-scan-hacking-bush-dubai.html

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