In the end, Microsoft’s technicians got what they needed. Sometimes it took more than an hour to work through the checklist, but Lutnick said he made sure he was never the one to hang up first. Conversations oscillated between sudden bawling and agonizing silences. Lutnick said he never referred to anyone as being dead, just “not available right now.” He framed his questions to be an affirmation of that person’s importance to the company, he said. “The fire department was still referring to it as a search-and-rescue mission.” Families had not accepted their losses. “Remember, this was less than 24 hours after the towers had fallen,” he said. “What is your wedding anniversary? Tell me again where he went for undergrad? You guys have a dog, don’t you? What’s her name? You have two children. Most often they did not, which meant that Lutnick had to begin working his way through a checklist that had been provided to him by the Microsoft technicians. He soon found himself on the phone, desperately trying to compartmentalize his own agony while calling the spouses, parents and siblings of his former colleagues to console them - and to ask them, ever so gently, whether they knew their loved ones’ passwords. “It’s the details that make people distinct, that make them individuals,” Lutnick said. The technicians explained that for their algorithms to work best, they needed large amounts of trivia about the owner of each missing password, the kinds of things that were too specific, too personal and too idiosyncratic for companies to keep on file.
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Microsoft’s technicians, Lutnick recalled, knew that they needed to take advantage of two facts: Many people use the same password for multiple accounts, and these passwords are typically personalized.
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To crack those, the Microsoft technicians performed “brute force” attacks, using fast computers to begin with “a” then work through every possible letter and number combination before ending at “ZZZZZZZ.” But even with the fastest computers, brute-force attacks, working through trillions of combinations, could take days. Many of the missing passwords would prove to be relatively secure - the “JH圆fT!9” type that the company’s I.T. Hours after the attacks, Microsoft dispatched more than 30 security experts to an improvised Cantor Fitzgerald command center in Rochelle Park, N.J., roughly 20 miles from the rubble. “No one in those days had ever thought of an entire four-to-six-block radius being destroyed.” The attacks also knocked out one of the company’s main backup servers, which were housed, at what until that day seemed like a safe distance away, under 2 World Trade Center. “We were thinking of a major fire,” Lutnick said. But now a large majority of the firm’s 960 New York employees were dead. Cantor Fitzgerald did have extensive contingency plans in place, including a requirement that all employees tell their work passwords to four nearby colleagues. The biggest threat to that survival became apparent almost immediately: No one knew the passwords for hundreds of accounts and files that were needed to get back online in time for the reopening of the bond markets. But he was also the one person most responsible for ensuring the viability of his company. Like virtually everyone else caught up in the events that day, Lutnick, who had taken the morning off to escort his son, Kyle, to his first day of kindergarten, was in shock.
Not long after the planes struck the twin towers, killing 658 of his co-workers and friends, including his brother, one of the first things on Lutnick’s mind was passwords. Don’t get tattoos when ur 16 kids…it’s hard to find someone good who will tattoo you underage.Howard Lutnick, the chief executive of Cantor Fitzgerald, one of the world’s largest financial-services firms, still cries when he talks about it. Two years after getting the tattoo, she posted new pictures showing how thick the lines had become and wrote “Like forreal that glo up is ridiculous. She was only 16 when she got the tattoo and has advised her fans to wait until they are 18 to get tattoos so that they can get inked by the best quality artists. I will always happily support all of them ❤️,” she tweeted. “I have two moms, gay uncles, lesbian aunts and many LGBT friends. Her parents are two lesbian women and Bea has always been a staunch supporter of LGBT+ rights. “Thought it was the perfect day to get this tattoo #LoveWins” she tweeted. She had the tattoo done on July 25th, 2015 - the same day that the US Supreme Court invalidated local bans on gay marriage therefore making same-sex marriage legal in all 50 states. Bea Miller has a tiny tattoo of an equal sign on her left wrist in support of gay marriage and equal rights for all people.