Xref: utzoo news.admin:3896 news.sysadmin:1201
Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!seismo!esosun!ucsdhub!loral!jlh
From: jlh@loral.UUCP (Physically Pffft)
Newsgroups: news.admin,news.sysadmin
Subject: Punish the worm author?
Message-ID: <1863@loral.UUCP>
Date: 7 Nov 88 22:24:47 GMT
References: <361@itivax.UUCP> <367@execu.UUCP>
Reply-To: jlh@loral.UUCP (Physically Pffft)
Organization: At the Remote Controls
Lines: 35

In article <367@execu.UUCP> dewey@execu.UUCP (Dewey Henize) writes:
>
>On the next area of consideration, who's gonna get hold of the bastard
>that caused this and beat the shit out of him?  Having a daddy that's a 
>supposedly high security muckety-much should, if anything, imply that the
>[censored] should know a lot better...  And its not like the law is gonna
>do much, the isn't even a clear picture of what laws are broken by ruining
>the days of hundreds or thousands of people..
>
>What the hell, someone had to say that part.  If you disagree, don't let
>that stop you from thanking the GOOD folks.
>
I hate to sound like I encourage this sort of thing but I think the guy did
a lot of people a hell of a favor.  He was non-malicious in intent, but got
zapped by a bug.  What if he had been malicious and had released a better
tested worm (oops, now maybe its a virus again)?  Want your day ruined?
Have the virus sit around until, say, the midnight before term papers are
due.  Then do a 'rm -rf * /' with root priviledges.  He basically did what
any intellegent and/or determined hacker could have done.  Knowing people as I 
do I'd say it's more a matter of when and how, not if and how.

Someone suggested that this virus be loosed upon the land on a monthly
basis.  I think there is a lot of merit to this type of thinking, at least
system administrators would a) be aware that people will try to hack
their systems, and b) educate them as to how their systems are vulnerable.
Don't flame me as an anarcist, the idea in it's present form is unworkable.
But it's something to think about.


							Jim

-- 
Jim Harkins 				jlh@loral.cts.com may work.
Loral Instrumentation, San Diego
{ucbvax, ittvax!dcdwest, akgua, decvax, ihnp4}!ucsd!sdcc6!loral!jlh