Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!cis.ohio-state.edu!pacific.mps.ohio-state.edu!linac!mp.cs.niu.edu!rickert
From: rickert@mp.cs.niu.edu (Neil Rickert)
Newsgroups: comp.admin.policy
Subject: Re: RFC on my "abuse"
Message-ID: <1991Jun25.173013.3784@mp.cs.niu.edu>
Date: 25 Jun 91 17:30:13 GMT
References: <1991Jun25.154257.7452@m.cs.uiuc.edu>
Organization: Northern Illinois University
Lines: 25

In article <1991Jun25.154257.7452@m.cs.uiuc.edu> jjones@uiuc.edu writes:
>  While I was getting my MS in CS at Arizona State University, I ran into a
>bit of trouble with the Engineering Computing facilities people.  Over
>Memorial Day weekend in 1989, I ran a shell script that went through a list
>of internet sites ending in ".com" to see if those sites allowed anonymous
>FTP.  In my shell script, so as to not load the networks over-much, I inserted
>a sleep 30 between each attempt.  I also deliberately chose a holiday weekend

  Do you ever walk down the street, and as you do so, walk up to each house
and test the front door to see if they left it open?

  I suspect if you ever did this, the local police would not have been as
nice to you as your computer administrator.

  Yet, in effect, this is exactly what you did on the net.  Only, worse still
you didn't walk down the street to do this.  You drove down the street in
a car that had been provided to you for totally different purposes, thereby
making the owner of the car (that is, the computer center and the university)
unwitting accomplices in your activity.

-- 
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  Neil W. Rickert, Computer Science               <rickert@cs.niu.edu>
  Northern Illinois Univ.
  DeKalb, IL 60115                                   +1-815-753-6940