Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!steinmetz!davidsen
From: davidsen@steinmetz.ge.com (William E. Davidsen Jr)
Newsgroups: comp.misc
Subject: Re: CALL FOR VOTES:  DID HE DO US A SERVICE OR NOT?
Message-ID: <12584@steinmetz.ge.com>
Date: 14 Nov 88 14:50:41 GMT
References: <1330@stiatl.UUCP> <202@hsi86.hsi.UUCP> <6081@killer.DALLAS.TX.US> <31053@think.UUCP> <744@tank.uchicago.edu>
Reply-To: davidsen@crdos1.UUCP (bill davidsen)
Distribution: na
Organization: General Electric CRD, Schenectady, NY
Lines: 29

In article <744@tank.uchicago.edu> daryl@arthur.UUCP (Daryl McLaurine) writes:

| Bottom line: If this person would have posted an alert to the net with a sample
| program, THAT would have been a very valuable service.

  I disagree. Posting a "how to" program would have allowed many people
to play with virus programs even though they were not able to figure out
the hole themsleves. Without an actual problem probably 10% of the
admins would take the time to fix it, and the rest would say "I'll fix
it if there's a real problem," and "I can't run without debug, I could
get my .cf to work." We have a person here who felt that Sun was better
than Ultrix because Ultrix had debug off.

  The only way to get get people to do something is to kick them. Hard.
I am not claiming that this justifies kicking people, not am I defending
the use of the worm (I would feel fine about a long prison sentence for
things like that, having been burned by a hacker before). But I do agree
that what was done had a high ratio of good result to consequences.

  Someone used the analogy of stealing a car to teach people not to
leave their keys. I think that what happened recently is more like
locking the door and leaving the car sitting with the keys inside. It
was a major embarassment and inconvenience, but didn't have the long
term effect that wiping files would have.
that 
-- 
	bill davidsen		(wedu@ge-crd.arpa)
  {uunet | philabs}!steinmetz!crdos1!davidsen
"Stupidity, like virtue, is its own reward" -me