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Is it just me, or was the Imperial capital ship override that Zahn had Mara Jade use one of the silliest things Palpatine could have done from an internal security standpoint? Since the code can be entered from a standard terminal, it has to be something that can be typed in on whatever the standard Imperial interface is, probably some incredibly long string of numbers and Basic language characters. This gives it a finite number of possible combinations to gain control of any major Imperial ship. if you capture an ISD, take one of its Computer cores out of the ship, and have a supercomputer throw random combinations at it as rapidly as possible, you will eventually get the answer. Alternatively, capture a facility that makes ISD computer cores, and do a line by line check of the manufacturing and coding instructions.
Also, after Mara Jade joined the NR, she could have given them this code and allowed them to assimilate the Remnant in short order.

At first glance, it seems silly. But the Emperor's Hands were his most trusted subordinates, and he didn't want any of his starship captains knowing about them, ergo he wanted the Hands to have access to the ship's computers without the ship's captain knowing it. Additionally, the Empire had an excellent track record of wiping computer cores before their ships could be captured...a complete Imperial computer core wasn't captured until the Black Fleet Crisis.

This was specifically stated to be hardwired into the system, to prevent any possible tampering. And Han Solo captured one ISD almost singlehandedly during the aftermath of the battle of Endor.

Its indicated by follow-ups that the Code is also Biometric in nature making the degree of complexing even harder


Take a 28 Diget Code, Combine it with a 720,000 Biometric Fingerprint and your taking about serious complexitity

That didn't stop R2-D2 from messing with almost all the Empire's superweapons.

Lower level access is not quite the same thing

What did Arto do? Open a Door in a non-restriced Area and stoped a Gabage Masher, somehow I don't think those would be under 50,000 Layers of Security, Let me dig up Iron Fist agian, They mention what kind of Security is running on the Iron Fist and the fact that anything truely harmful would be dected and elimated in seconds in the computer system

R2 smacked the Eclipse II into the Galaxy Gun, and shut down the World Devastators with the stolen code as well. He would probably have fixed the bunker backdoor in ROTJ too. That's why he was shocked.. hero's can't fail in SW, even if they are droids.

Now, I'm not saying that security is bad. Examples given by previous posters.

I'm saying that Palpatine was a fool. He let his own faults get the better of him; his obsession with Luke Skywalker (even after two lost Death Stars, if you read DE), the fact that he ruled by fear alone, he kept his minions constantly fighting between themselves which was the true reason why the Empire fell so quickly, and he was absolutely paranoic. In a sense, he defeated himself.

He was smart enough to give Thrawn free rein and send him on his way to conquer the rest of the Galaxy However, The Emperor had a succesor though he did not plan it so

Oh, I don't deny Palpatine's strong points. He has to be the ultimate political manipulator, after all. Setting up the blockade of Naboo, holding the reins of the Clone Wars while working against it at the same time, etc. In short, how he became Emperor. But there's no denial that he made several strategic and tactical mistakes because he put his own agenda on top, rather than the good of the Empire as a whole.

If thay made it dependent upon the person activating the code, get a strand of hair or some skin cells, and grow yourself a clone.

I think Palpy only gave a "limited" code to his "Hands".

As I remember Mara only searched for the cell-block archives.

I don't think Palpy gave her a total control over a Star Destroyer...

R2-D2 could also hold the plans to the entire Deathstar in his hard drive; indeed a large Star Wars floppy disk can do so. With that kind of computer power, brute-forcing things wouldn't be that hard. But then Mara's code only gave access to a few things. The code to get full control of the computer system likely takes advantage of that same massive processing and storage capacity and is millions of characters long.


Having total command codes has its drawbacks. But the Emperor had far more to fear from a rebellion of his own fleet then from external sources stealing a few vessels.

As for capturing the computer plant, if that happens your fucked anyway. Most modern encoding and decoding equipment can be defeated if you capture an example of it. Even one time pads can be defeated if you've got someone feeding you copies of them from the location of there creation.