Path: utzoo!utgpu!attcan!uunet!husc6!mailrus!purdue!i.cc.purdue.edu!j.cc.purdue.edu!mace.cc.purdue.edu!mtr
From: mtr@mace.cc.purdue.edu (Miek Rowan)
Newsgroups: news.admin
Subject: Re: Getting Even
Summary: Hang on...
Message-ID: <1016@mace.cc.purdue.edu>
Date: 7 Nov 88 14:34:23 GMT
References: <367@execu.UUCP> <265@acheron.UUCP> <1636@pikes.Colorado.EDU>
Organization: Unix Groupie
Lines: 38

In article <1636@pikes.Colorado.EDU>, netnews@pikes.Colorado.EDU (Robert Sklar) writes:
> Fist off, I want to state that I have no bad feeling for the guy who created
> the virus, as we call it.  This has been confirmed as an experiment by a
> computer student that "accidently" went crazy and spread.  Not only that,

Hang on.  I saw it.  It was meant to do exactly what it did.  The
only possible truth in what you said is that he wasn't finished with 
it yet.  This kid knew exactly what he was doing, his code shows that.
No - you can't write this off as an accident.  It was intentional.  Maybe
he should get sentenced to 20 years of security work for the Goverment
(at goverment wages :-) --  But by no means should we just say : "Be more
careful next time."   He cost the net A LOT of money.  

If you are looking to hire someone like this, think about it first.  A school
may not be held accountable, but a company would be a different story 
I imagine.  

> but said individual also owned up to the fact that he did it.  I think that
> if I was making the decision to hire someone, I would want someone as smart
> as that on my team.  It's things like this which make us sit up and take
> notice that maybe everything is not as easy as we think.

As smart and irresponsible you mean.   When he messes something up to
show you it could be done, and it takes you a number of man years to fix
it, then what will you say?   "But gee, he is so smart!"  Get real.

When you were in High School, did you break all the schools windows just
because there was no police patrol after 12 midnight?  This is the same 
thing.  

We have all found bugs in the BSD release (as well as others - more there
in fact) but did we EXPLOIT THEM???  NO!  Did we WASTE THOUSANDS OF NET
HOURS??? NO!  

(now, don't get the wrong idea, I am *not* in favor of public executions)
:-)

mtr