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From: weemba@garnet.berkeley.edu (Obnoxious Math Grad Student)
Newsgroups: comp.misc,news.sysadmin
Subject: Re: Possible Fines for Virus Perpetrator
Keywords: Morris, virus, internet
Message-ID: <16600@agate.BERKELEY.EDU>
Date: 7 Nov 88 06:05:15 GMT
References: <456@l5comp.UUCP> <12081@dscatl.UUCP>
Sender: usenet@agate.BERKELEY.EDU
Reply-To: weemba@garnet.berkeley.edu (Obnoxious Math Grad Student)
Followup-To: news.sysadmin
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Organization: Brahms Gang Posting Central
Lines: 41
In-reply-to: lindsay@dscatl.UUCP (Lindsay Cleveland)

In article <12081@dscatl.UUCP>, lindsay@dscatl (Lindsay Cleveland) writes:
>>		  So, it was Robert T. Morris Jr., was it?

>I would surmise that a lot of the sites who *were* damaged by the
>virus and expended much real cash in man-hours (overtime!) chasing it
>down would be interested in proceeding with a class-action suit against
>the fellow to recover damages.

Well gee.  Divide $10K say by 10K computers say, and they each win $1.
Next you subtract off the lawyers' fees...  Hmmm...  Economics wasn't
your major, I presume?

>			         Whether or not it made it through all
>the courts, appeals, etc. is perhaps not as useful as the scare it
>would throw into some other clowns who might think of trying a similar
>worm/virus "just for a bit of fun!"

I see that you, like thousands of others, don't really understand.  Robert
T Morris Jr has done everyone a FAVOR.  Instead of thanking him for maybe
waking up people on the ARPANET to how DAMN EASY IT IS TO INFILTRATE, you,
like thousands of others, just think he's some annoying clown out there
who gets off on crashing the net.

Guess what?  Well, maybe he is an annoying clown, but that's irrelevant.

There are thousands of computers out there extremely vulnerable to attack.
Instead of wailing on about class-action suits to recover "damages", all
these sites that just maybe have woken up and plan to actually take secur-
ity seriously should pay RTM in moneys saved from the potential *BILLIONS*
that could be lost for being so many ostriches.  WAKE UP FOLKS!  This may
very well prove to be your last warning.

>Let me join in the chorus of applause for those many net.people who
>quickly came up with answers and solutions, and for their great
>efforts in spreading the word to the rest of the net.

Yup, good show there.  I hope you're not smugly counting on the next rogue
code to be so easy to notice and eliminate by some of my fellow Berkeley
grad students?  DO SOMETHING **NOW** TO PROTECT YOURSELVES!  WAKE UP FOLKS!

ucbvax!garnet!weemba	Matthew P Wiener/Brahms Gang/Berkeley CA 94720