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From: russotto@eng.umd.edu (Matthew T. Russotto)
Newsgroups: comp.admin.policy
Subject: Re: Possibly nefarious users
Message-ID: <1991Jun12.201850.2980@eng.umd.edu>
Date: 12 Jun 91 20:18:50 GMT
References: <1991Jun7.164102.672@progress.com> <1991Jun7.184025.25010@eng.umd.edu> <1991Jun7.215349.11643@zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu>
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In article <1991Jun7.215349.11643@zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu> alden@shape.mps.ohio-state.edu (Dave Alden) writes:
>In article <1991Jun7.184025.25010@eng.umd.edu> russotto@eng.umd.edu (Matthew T. Russotto) writes:
>>Oh, and if you made a habit of leaving your car unlocked with the keys in the
>>ignition, and people came by and took it for a spin now and then, I suspect
>>the cops would just laugh at you for being such an idiot if you tried to 
>>prosecute them.
>
>At first I thought you were kidding, but then I read your other posts and I
>realized that you just don't have a clue.  Rather than waste bandwidth I'll
>just point those with a similar opinion to the Internet worm case with Robert
>Morris(sp?) - he tried a similar line of reasoning and lost in court.

Robert Morris Jr. (the Jr. IS significant) did a hell of a lot more than access
a dialup whose status (for restricted use or not) was unknown.  What he did
was write a program which would exploit known BUGS in systems and access them--
and tie them up, though I'm told that was a bug in his program.  The proper
analogy in this case is joyriding in all the Fiats I could find
if I knew that a well placed blow on a Fiat would open the door, and sticking
a screwdriver behind the dash would defeat the ignition lock.  
--
Matthew T. Russotto	russotto@eng.umd.edu	russotto@wam.umd.edu
     .sig under construction, like the rest of this campus.