The Password Is Always Swordfish: Difference between revisions

* ''[[Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan|Star Trek II the Wrath of Khan]]'' showed us that one Federation starship can use a "prefix code" to get another Federation starship to lower its shields. This very dangerous trick is protected by five-digit (non-repeating judging by the switch mechanism used to enter it), numbers-only sequence a modern-day computer could break in almost no time. The only saving grace is that there is an [[Override Command]] in place specifically designed to keep starships from doing this to each other at will; the system was designed to take out captured vessels, under the assumption that any boarding parties would be unlikely to locate it. Also, it could be that the ship would only get '''one''' crack at the code, so a brute force password attack would fail.

* Zed-10, the [[Master Computer]] in ''[[Fortress]]'' (1993 film with Christopher Lambert) has not a password, but a passphrase... Trope averted? Not at all: the passphrase is "Crime does not pay", the motto Zed-10 repeats every now and then (oh, and let's forget the [[Hollywood Hacking]] involved here...)

{{quote|'''Simon:''' Okay, Jeanette, the third number is notoriously the hardest to crack. It's most likely a prime number, but we can't assume that.

'''Jeanette:''' Simon, the first two were one. I'm going to have to go with one.