Reading the Cybergate item brought back memories of an incident in New Jersey back in the late 1980s. See the second news item at

My recollections...
In the NJ State Legislature, a Republican staffer accessed the supposedly separate file area used by the Democrats and got access to various documents. Eventually, it was discovered and became a messy fray. The Democrats wanted to throw the book for unauthorized access. The Republicans countered by showing info obtained by the "hack" that showed illegal use of state employee time for campaigning. The who matter fizzled out.

Last I heard of the matter, an author of a 2600 article used a samurai analogy for the staffer. A bit overdone but unintentionally funny.

From the little bits and pieces I have gleaned about the incident, it appears that poor configuration of a file server was a big part of the problem. It may well been that the only security was the level of "gentlemen's rules" between the two political parties that nobody would ever navigate over their side of the directory tree and over into the other side. Not a good bet. (This is just a speculation for now.)

J.D. Abolins

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