Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!wucs1!wucfua!jlc
From: jlc@wucfua.wustl.edu (Roving UIUC CS Grad Student)
Newsgroups: news.admin
Subject: Re: Getting Even
Message-ID: <357@wucfua.wustl.edu>
Date: 8 Nov 88 01:36:43 GMT
References: <367@execu.UUCP> <265@acheron.UUCP>
Reply-To: jlc@wucfua.UUCP (Roving UIUC CS Grad Student)
Organization: Reality Liberation Front, University of Illinois Chapter
Lines: 32

In article <265@acheron.UUCP> clarke@acheron.UUCP (Ed Clarke) writes:
>That may not be necessary.  Would you hire someone with the poor
>judgement to deliberately screw with federal computers?

Me? No! But I'm not in the computer security business. He's probably
already got a handful of lucrative job offers already, though, from
those who are. If nothing else, I'll bet the NSA would be very interested.

>Come to think of it, is ??? university liable for the damage one of 
>their students has done to the arpa net?  Can they be sued to recover 
>the cost of the computer time used by the worm?  Frankly, I hope that
>this is not the case - but it's something to think about when this
>persons resume comes across your desk.

I sure doubt it. In fact, I'd be very surprised if the AUTHOR is liable
for even the cost of computer time, much less the time spent tracking down
the worm and stomping it. This isn't exactly a well-specified area of the
law, and precedent is pretty thin.

While we're at it, let's all let out a BIG sigh of relief that, for
this first big worm, the author was clearly not malicious. If this had
been a malicious worm (just a simple disk-eraser would be enough)
think of the cost and the damage. We're all REAL lucky to have gotten
a low-cost, high-visability warning of how vulnerable we all are.

 --------------------------------------------------------------------------
| John L. Coolidge   Internet:jlc@wucfua.wustl.edu    UUCP:jlc@wucfua.uucp |
| "My other account is in Illinois"        I just read news here...        |
| With the exception of included material: All above opinions are mine.    |
| Licensing terms available. Copyright (c) 1988 John L. Coolidge. Copying  |
| allowed if and only if attributed. All other rights reserved.            |
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