Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!pilchuck!dataio!shiloh!rwing!pat
From: pat@rwing.UUCP (Pat Myrto)
Newsgroups: comp.sources.d
Subject: Re: "cops" and robbers
Message-ID: <1113@rwing.UUCP>
Date: 8 Apr 90 15:18:19 GMT
References: <16900@well.sf.ca.us> <1990Mar29.055350.2922@Jhereg.Minnetech.MN.ORG> <1110@rwing.UUCP> <2258@wpg.com>
Reply-To: pat@rwing.UUCP (Pat Myrto)
Followup-To: news.sysadmin
Organization: Very Little Organization, Seattle WA
Lines: 62

In article <2258@wpg.com> russ@wpg.com (Russell Lawrence) writes:
} In article <1110@rwing.UUCP>, pat@rwing.UUCP (Pat Myrto) writes:
} >
} > [ ... description of small sites worthiness deleted ]
} 
}  [ ... description of "benefits" to the net of secrecy deleted ]
} 
} In a recent issue of the journal of the American Trial Lawyers 
} Association, the president of that organization pointed out that 
} the praise of "secrecy" and "secret knowledge" is one of the 
} major barriers to the progress of our society as a whole.  The 
} theory that secrecy or silence prevents problems from becoming 
} worse has been used before in many fields of endeavor, politics, 
} religion, health care, etc, and history has shown us that it 
} doesn't work.  The underlying psychology reminds me of a childish 
} ego game.  
} 
} Oddly enough, the only serious criminal hacker I've ever known 
} personally was a young man with university affiliations that gave 
} him ready access to USG and BSD source.  It pisses me off that 
} this guy had access to information that is unavailable to me
} because of the lame brain notion that people at large sites 
} have a greater need to know, or greater integrity.  
} 
} Let me suggest that we start a new security mailing list based on 
} the premise that knowledge should be widely available.  I'm sure
} we'll get enough subscribers and contributors to make the thing
} worth while.
} 
} In addition, let's maintain an archive listing the "secret" 
} security mailing lists and their administrators and make this 
} list readily available to the press.  If/when one of my client's 
} machines is broken into, they may want to send sarcastic thank 
} you notes to the Reverend Guardians of Esoteric Knowledge.  

AMEN!  I'll go for that! (surpressing a grin that goes past my ears).
Such a list would go a long way to helping smaller sites harden up,
and just possibly make it possible for some sites to get their
security level up to where they will be willing to devote some of
their disk space and CPU time to spreading the news and e-mail around.

Regarding the list of the cloak-and-dagger boys, it is indeed time
some of these folks, to some small extent, anyway, reap some of the
good will their attitudes has caused.  Seems the attitude is not
unlike the attitude one sees of many of our politicians these days
(everyone is stupid/untrustworthy except themselves...).  I'll leave
it as an excercise to the reader to figure out what side of the aisle
most of these critters sit on.  :-)

Thinking on this, perhaps this discussion should be moved over to
something like news.sysadm or such??  We seem to have digressed from
the subject of discussing the COPS package per se...

Anyway, I have set follow-ups in the header to go to news.sysadmin,
since that seems a closer fitting newsgroup.  If someone disagrees,
they can always edit the header ...

-- 
pat@rwing                                       (Pat Myrto),  Seattle, WA
                            ...!uunet!pilchuck!rwing!pat
      ...!uw-beaver!uw-entropy!dataio!/
WISDOM:    "Travelling unarmed is like boating without a life jacket"