Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!mailrus!accuvax.nwu.edu!nucsrl!telecom-request From: john@bovine.ati.com (John Higdon) Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom Subject: Re: The Wrong End of the Telescope Message-ID: <4599@accuvax.nwu.edu> Date: 1 Mar 90 17:11:07 GMT Sender: news@accuvax.nwu.edu Reply-To: John Higdon Organization: TELECOM Digest Lines: 65 Approved: Telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Submissions-To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Administrivia-To: telecom-request@eecs.nwu.edu X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 10, Issue 135, Message 4 of 7 klg@dukeac.UUCP (Kim Greer) writes: > Obligatory net analogy: If I sit a briefcase down on the sidewalk > while I fumble with keys to unlock a car door, and some jerk heists > the brief- case, then you are telling me _I'm_ the criminal? Get > real. I'm fed up with lame excuses and garbaged reasoning from these > idiots (crackers or whatever name they want to call themselves - I'm > not referring to you, John) to somehow justify their illegal deeds. Just so there is no doubt, let me be absolutely clear concerning which side of the aisle I'm on. Not long ago, I blasted a post from some hacker which netted me some "warnings"--nay, threats from inhabitants of the the "darkside", etc. Never in any of my writings have I justified hacking now or in my other life of a distant past. The rational for phreaking and hacking was lame then and it's lame now and given the potential harm should not be tolerated. Are you with me so far? > Its an offense to prosecute someone because the victim had a > "relatively open door"?? Tell me that same thing should one ever bust > into one of your systems. I won't hold my breath. I would be mightily outraged if one broke into one of my systems. However, we are at some disagreement as to prevention techniques. You seem to feel (and I don't want to put words into your mouth) that it is more effective to run around and try to put all the hackers in jail rather than simply making the systems secure. As I said in my post, I have taken some rudimentary precautions to keep the casually curious out of my various computer and telephone systems. If everyone did the same, we might have less of a "hacker" problem to begin with. Don't you feel that it is "criminal" to be easier to hack into a system such as a telco RMAC than say someone's home UNIX computer? This was my point of the post. If security at critical systems is "au casual", then my ire is directed at the administrators of those systems, not the hackers. > [Moderator's Note: Like yourself, I am tired of hearing the notion > that *I* must be restricted and/or inconvenienced because *they* never > learned to respect the private property of others. When I leave my house, I have to lock the door. I also set the alarm. It really is an inconvenience. I really shouldn't have to do that. People should just know that my stuff is mine. And I live in a virtually crimeless neighborhood. > Its all too common > these days, isn't it: the victim is made into the guilty party, and > the guilty party becomes a folk hero persecuted by a government out to > get him. The best thing in the world that could have been done for > some of the crackers would have been for their parents to slap the > fire out of them a little more often. PT] Like you, I am infuriated with the folk hero status of some of these creeps. And I also agree that some of them should have been slapped around a little as kids (figuratively, at least). But the idea here is to prevent the breach of systems and to really accomplish something, isn't it? So rather than rail about how society *should* be and how people *should* act, why not face reality and design systems that are somewhat more resistant to intruders? John Higdon | P. O. Box 7648 | +1 408 723 1395 john@bovine.ati.com | San Jose, CA 95150 | M o o !