Path: utzoo!utgpu!attcan!uunet!husc6!bloom-beacon!athena.mit.edu!tytso From: tytso@athena.mit.edu (Theodore Y. Ts'o) Newsgroups: news.sysadmin Subject: Re: The viral high ground--go for it while I puke in the corner Message-ID: <7882@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU> Date: 10 Nov 88 06:39:21 GMT References: <367@execu.UUCP> <265@acheron.UUCP> <1636@pikes.Colorado.EDU> <5343@medusa.cs.purdue.edu> <16672@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> Sender: daemon@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU Reply-To: tytso@athena.mit.edu (Theodore Y. Ts'o) Organization: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Lines: 45 In article <16672@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> weemba@garnet.berkeley.edu (Obnoxious Math Grad Student) writes: > >What the HELL does that matter? Are you going to run around with your >heads in the sand over and over again, yelling "ain't my fault our locks >are all ten years out of date"? What does it take to wake you folks up? > Stuff like this makes me wish that news.admin _WAS_ moderated. Sigh. >>We cannot depend on making our systems completely secure. To do so >>would require that we disconnect them from each other. There will >>always be bugs and flaws, but we try to cover that by creating a sense >>of responsibility and social mores that say that breaking and cracking >>are bad things to do. > >Ooooh. A sense of responsibility and social mores? So you can declaim >from the moral high ground when ARPANET goes belly up three years from >now? How about a sense of intelligence and security to go with it? Repeat after me three times. "The ARPANET cannot be made secure." Got it? Now repeat it three more times. As long as machines are connected together usefully, there will always be a chance that somewhere, somehow, someone will be able to break in. So what are we going to do about it? We have to deter people from doing anti-social things --- either by giving them a sense of ethics or stringing up people who do these things. Why do you sneer at ethics so? In a previous article, you said that the virus/worm should be released every month to keep sysadmins on there toes. Well, how about this: every month, someone will randomly spray your office with machine gun fire. That'll teach you to wear bullet-proof vests! Personally, I prefer not to wear bullet-proof vests, becuase I can get a lot more done without them on. However, I don't think the human race will come to an end because in general, people don't wear bullet-proof bests. Similarily, the ARPANET won't die because of this. I was up all night thursday fighting this thing; I'm not inclined to think it was a "harmless prank" or an "effective way to wake us up" --- just as you wouldn't think that my shooting your feet off would be a good way to remind you to wear bullet-proof armor all the time. =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Theodore Ts'o bloom-beacon!mit-athena!tytso 3 Ames St., Cambridge, MA 02139 tytso@athena.mit.edu Everybody's playing the game; but nobody's rules are the same!