The Tuesday, February 2, 2016, edition of the local skewspaper, the Coeur d’Alene Press, ran an article headlined Cadets gain tech experience in CyberPatriot competition.

OpenCda commends the CAP Cadets desire to better understand and develop countermeasures to overcome technological vulnerabilities.

However, we respectfully point out an error in the reader ASNichols’ comment “this computer will solve all those issues ‘IBM Selectric II’ hack proof and crash proof.”

We urge the Cadets and ASNichols to read the declassified NSA report entitled (U) Learning from the Enemy:  The GUNMAN Project.  A more abbreviated and readable derivation of this report is entitled IBM Selectric Bug — Operation Gunman.

The lesson we hope the Cadets take away is that while technology is vulnerable, developing effective countermeasures to those vulnerabilities also requires an understanding of the mindset of your adversary seeking to exploit your technology.