Notes

1. Why did they replace human operators of the nuclear missiles with a computer?

They replaced original human operators with a computer because during an attack, some of the people in the missile combat crew did not turn the key, which was required to fire the missiles ni order to retaliate. Because of this, engineers and workers at NORAD created a machine designed to run war simulations and learn how to attack if the US ever gets attacked.
2. How did David – the young highschool character, break into the Defence Department computer system?

David broke into the system by learning about Falken’s family and his sons. It turned out that one of his sons, Jousha, was the password to the system.

3. What was the name of the game he started to play with the computer?
He started to play “Global Thermonuclear War”.
4. What is DEFCON 1? As described in the movie, describe all other DEFCON states as well.

DEFCON 1 is a defense condition used for immediate nuclear war when a country is about to be attacked. This state has never been used before ever.

DEFCON 2 is a state used when a country is preparing for the next step of nuclear war. Armed forces are engaged and readied up during the next 6 hours to fight. The time when this was used was during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

DEFCON 3 is a state used to increase armed forces and air forces. This was used in many past scenarios such as the 9/11 attacks in 2001 and Operation Paul Bunyan in 1976.

DEFCON 4 is a state used to indicate that information gathering and security measures should be heightened. This was used throughout the cold war.

DEFCON 5 is a state used to show that the current time is “peacetime”, meaning normal operating for defense should continue.

5. I don’t think this can happen today because the passwords used to get into security systems such as NORAD is more encrypted and hard to get into. They don’t have simple passwords like “Joshua”, or “pencil” to get into school systems. If they did, then the whole world would go into chaos because hackers could easily guess these passwords and do massive attacks against these systems and gain easy access.

6. Cyber hacking can be used for many things, both good and bad. Some examples are taking down terrorist-based websites, removing superviruses made by countries such as China or Russia, hacking computers to do good, and more. This is referred to as “whitehat hacking”. However, there are people who hack computers to do bad things. This is referred to as “blackhat hacking.” They take down websites (denial of service attacks), hack computers to do bad, such as leak confidential information or delete data, or other harmful things.