He's not going to jail and he's not going to pay hundreds of thousands of
dollars in fines, but just think a moment of the potential of what this guy
did.
Forget for a moment what it did or didn't cost the University or the state
of Georgia, but just look at his violating the policy of installing outside
software on University machines. I have no idea how many computer's
services he decided to donate to distributed.net on behalf of the state of
Georgia, but he potentially compromised every single one of them by running
outside software on them without the approval of his superiors. Look at the
present environment of viruses and worms that administrators need to guard
against. Now you've got a guy _working_ for you who takes it on himself to
just bypass all that for whatever reason.
Now you and I know that the machines and the network were in little danger
of being compromised. Still, it's not hard to imagine this guy (or maybe
someone not so bright) installing software that was infected with a worm or
other virus. The potential for problems here, which might cost the
University HUGE amounts of money to fix are very real. That alone makes
what he did a very serious offense.
This is reminiscent of the Randal Schwartz case of few years ago.
http://www.lightlink.com/spacenka/fors/
Now, Randal is another darling of the Internet geeks. As a contractor for
Intel, he took it upon himself to install software that left backdoors for
himself (to make his job easier) into a few of Intel's systems. Intel's
administrator's found the backdoors and had warned him to remove them. He
changed the programs to make them more secure, but left some in place. Now
the guy knows his s**t -- no argument there. And if he says the software is
secure, I'd believe him. Still, if you had to administer security at Intel,
where there's very little room and grave financial consequences if trade
secrets are stolen, how'd you like to deal with an arrogant asshole like
this working for you? He was tried and convicted (I think he got a deferred
sentence and a couple years probation), as he should have been.
Jim
----- Original Message -----
From: "Cameron Childress" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "CF-Community" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Sunday, August 26, 2001 4:25 PM
Subject: RE: More net insanity
> I am
>
> 1) A resident of GA (the state suing this guy).
> 2) A supporter of distributed.net
> (http://stats.distributed.net/rc5-64/tmsummary.php3?team=865184487).
> 3) Someone who has installed the dist.net at work on several computers.
>
> This guy did something wrong, the state/school overreacted. I think this
> problem is more about the fact that the state/college don't understand
> technology and resource usage more than anything else.
>
> dist.net uses virtually zero bandwidth, depending on how it's configured
it
> typically only does 4 to 8 transfers a day, each very small in size. I'm
> kinda confused as to where they are getting the 59 cents per second cost.
> The freemcowen.com site talks about it being based on something to do with
> email, but dnetc doesn't use email for transmissions.
>
> Consider this... IF this case "goes all the way", should anyone on the
> network be allowed to instal and use AIM? I would say AIM probably uses
> more bandwidth than dnetc, and assuming it's not specifically permitted
for
> use, shouldn't all those using it on their computers be sued? Maybe half
a
> mil each for them too?
>
> Of course, that's a totally insane idea and should be handled in another
> way. This, IMHO, is too.
>
> -Cameron
>
> --------------------
> Cameron Childress
> elliptIQ Inc.
> p.770.460.7277.232
> f.770.460.0963
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Howie Hamlin [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
> > Sent: Sunday, August 26, 2001 11:06 AM
> > To: CF-Community
> > Subject: More net insanity
> >
> >
> > Just read about this in my local newspaper (Newsday)
> >
> > http://www.freemcowen.com/
> >
> >
> > Howie Hamlin - inFusion Project Manager
> > On-Line Data Solutions, Inc.
> > www.CoolFusion.com
> > 631-737-4668 x101
> > inFusion Mail Server (iMS) - The Intelligent Mail Server
> > Join the DevCon community at www.coolfusion.com/devcon
> >
> >
> >
>
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