The WARE Report (1970)

The report called Security Controls for Computer Systems, or best known as The Ware Report, was published in 1970 as the result of the work of a task force appointed to investigate the security problems created by resource-sharing computers. The 81-page report is very detailed and high-quality, clearly demonstrating the sharpness of everyone on the task force at the time.

The diagram above (Figure 3) is one of my favorites. It sketches a complete threat landscape as seen at the time: hardware faults, software gaps, operators, maintenance staff, remote consoles, and the communications lines themselves. We may as well be looking at a diagram of recent years security issues, and I am confident that in some organisations most of these threats are not as clear as this diagram shows!

Another thing that blows my mind is the timing. The report came out in 1970, sixteen years before Cliff Stoll’s Cuckoo’s Egg investigation in 1986, and eighteen years before the Morris Worm in 1988! The report is an excellent reminder that the security problems have been known for a very long time, but that does not make them easy to solve.

Let no one say the past is dead. The past is all about us and within. – Oodgeroo Noonuccal