Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!rutgers!okstate!romed!drd!mark
From: mark@drd.UUCP (Mark Lawrence)
Newsgroups: news.sysadmin
Subject: Re: The virus
Summary: Watch for the other shoe to drop
Message-ID: <306@drd.UUCP>
Date: 8 Nov 88 13:55:48 GMT
References: <5330@medusa.cs.purdue.edu> <16608@agate.BERKELEY.EDU>
Reply-To: mark@drd.UUCP (Mark Lawrence)
Distribution: na
Organization: in *this* company!?
Lines: 25

I'm just waiting for the logical next step after the most recent ruckus.
I can imagine a conversation among mucky-mucks higher up in the DoD, NSA
and NSC:

	"What the hell are we doing permitting access to Military Networks
	by hacker college geeks?  What do you mean that anybody in the world
	with a PC and a modem can send traffic across our networks?  What
	the hell is this mail and net news garbage anyway?..." ad nauseum.

Gad, it sets me ill-at-ease to have our net techno-existance foisted up
before national media for close scrutiny and examination.  The potential
for misinformation and misinterpretation of events due to lack of
understanding of the technicalities are great.  There are generals,
admirals, congress-critters and beaurocrats who are now (maybe
needlessly) worried about the how this worm (none of the media reports
that I've seen have corrected the ubiquitous use of the 'virus' term) 
or the next occurance might affect SAC, NORAD, the security system at 
Fort Knox or some other crucial computerized facility.  Whether the 
danger to such such systems is real or not is immaterial to the 
policy-setters and the decision-makers.  They will (do?) percieve 
vulnerability and (knee-jerk reaction) steps will be taken.  I think 
that the probability is great that such (not well thought out or informed) 
actions could radically change the Net as we know it.

	Mark