In the Applesauce mini-saga, Whit reveals the existence of a top-secret program to Eugene, and before long, everyone knows about it. Later, in "The Battle", Richard Maxwell and Dr. Blackgaard connect to the computer in Whit's End and attempt to access Applesauce, but are foiled by the lack of a password. This leads us to a series of questions and points:
1) It's obvious why Applesauce 'has' to be on the computer from a writing standpoint (it is a parallel for the Garden of Eden), but why would Whit store a top-secret government program on the same computer he uses to run Whit's End appliances and devices?
2) Since he did, why would Whit then set up his top-secret computer with military secrets so that anyone with a modem could remotely access it? There's no obvious reason I could see why it would need general internet access in the first place, much less accept connections from elsewhere. At the most, I could see there being a private line to some government facility.
3) Why is Mabel set up for an unprotected single-user environment? It's one thing to say that Whit should be able to trust Eugene to run the computer, but anybody who remotely logs in (without any password) gets high-level access too.
4) Why would Whit create a "power surge" function in the first place? Since he did, why isn't it protected, since it is likely to be destructive?
Not really a question, but 5) A single password was apparently enough to protect Applesauce, in practice. But in hindsight, it seems like a somewhat imperfect security mechanism for something that is so important everyone in the world wants it. It seems like it would be better if it also required physical access to the machine (perhaps with some kind of dongle). (This would also explain the defensive move of making a secret computer room in the first place.)
6) When you run Applesauce and fail to enter the password at level 2, Mabel shuts down everything in Whit's End, including herself. Apparently you then have to physically reset the system. That certainly does prevent people from remotely getting at the military secrets in the computer, but it seems that a less drastic step might be in order, e.g. shutting down all internet access, or preventing anyone from accessing any of the programs without entering a second password (maybe in person, using voice commands). This is another thing that is explained by the "Garden" context, but it seems like a flawed practice in reality.
7) Does Mabel keep a log of connections? Apparently she does to some extent, because they were able to find out there were two attempts to access Applesauce; one we know of for sure, Maxwell/Blackgaard, and it's been suggested via [commentary on] "An Accidental Dilemma" that the Whisperer also did. Nowadays it'd be hard to find someone who didn't want to be found, thanks to proxy servers, but this was 1989. Couldn't they have tracked these people down?
It was an exciting series in the late '80s, but in retrospect it seems like it needs some serious explanation or retconning so that Mr. Whittaker isn't a careless steward of government property.
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