Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!seismo!sundc!pitstop!sun!decwrl!labrea!agate!garnet!weemba
From: weemba@garnet.berkeley.edu (Obnoxious Math Grad Student)
Newsgroups: news.sysadmin
Subject: Re: The viral high ground, etc.
Message-ID: <16922@agate.BERKELEY.EDU>
Date: 13 Nov 88 00:48:19 GMT
References: <16843@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> <426@rhesus.primate.wisc.edu>
Sender: usenet@agate.BERKELEY.EDU
Reply-To: weemba@garnet.berkeley.edu (Obnoxious Math Grad Student)
Organization: Brahms Gang Posting Central
Lines: 41
In-reply-to: bin@rhesus.primate.wisc.edu (Brain in Neutral)

In article <426@rhesus.primate.wisc.edu>, bin@rhesus (Brain in Neutral) writes:
>Being defeatist would matter if it caused us not to take a course
>of action which, if taken, would have made our installations more
>secure *or* less subject to attack.  These are not quite the same.

My view is that the improve-ethics approach the defeatist approach,
using the above definition.

>You have focused more on virus-proofing installations, others have
>focused on encouraging or requiring ethical behavior.

Not just virus-proofing, but security consciousness raising in general.
If all that came out of the Morris worm was anti-Morris-worm software,
we haven't learned anything.

>	   An insecure site is insecure regardless of whether it's been
>attacked.  But if by "no result" we mean no difference in the number of
>*actual* attacks, then I think we can reasonably say that approaches
>oriented toward ethics will *not* be without result.

The number will not matter if just one of them is a complete major
disaster.

>> How many sites would be wiped out if a fire hit your computer room?
>> Are your backups in the same room as your disks and computers?

>That's correct, but there should still be consequences for someone who
>deliberately sets a fire, shouldn't there?

Of course.  But how many sites make it easy?

>> Making theft possible only for those with the heaviest of hardware
>> does more, I hazard, then teaching kids to "just say no" to stealing.

>Well now, I'd say that this is mischaracterization of my argument
>(something I know you don't like when you think others do it to you),

Guilty as charged.  What I should have said is in some of my other
recent articles.

ucbvax!garnet!weemba	Matthew P Wiener/Brahms Gang/Berkeley CA 94720