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From: df@sei.cmu.edu (Dan Farmer)
Newsgroups: comp.org.eff.talk
Subject: Re: Should we let students run COPS to get each other's passwords?
Message-ID: <27111@as0c.sei.cmu.edu>
Date: 16 Jun 91 13:28:55 GMT
Sender: netnews@sei.cmu.edu
Lines: 32

In article <foo>, mcovingt@athena.cs.uga.edu (Michael A. Covington) writes:
[...]
> You've deliberately misunderstood what I meant by "confidential."
> Passwords are secret. Period. You have no right to decrypt other
> people's passwords. Period. Regardless of the technical difficulty or ease
> of doing so.

  Why?  We don't have *explicit* rights to do much of anything in this
world -- mostly people are constrained by laws against certain actions.
You have no authority or "right" to tell me what my rights are -- living
in the US of A, supposedly we have free speach, etc., but even those are
extremely tenuous.  What is a "right", anyway?  I'm not sure what you're
even talking about here -- the word is abused, misconstrued, and generally
misued.  Certainly there are no judicial laws that I'm aware of against
cracking passwords.  There are some laws, in some countries, against
breaking into (whatever that means) certain systems.  If you're talking
about some *moral* law or right, you haven't made a convincing argument --
all you are saying, as far as I can see, is "because that's the way I
think it should be."  I suppose some sites can make a policy that anyone
on their system, cracking passwords is a punishable (by whatever) offence,
but I'm not sure how well that would hold up in court, if someone
decided to challenge it.

> OK then, if passwords aren't secret, give me yours!!!

  Sure:

df:T8oOksRWnnA8Y:3271:20:Dan:/usr/users/df:/usr/local/bin/tcsh

  Break it if you can.

 -- d