Re: "Hackers"-- brief review and anecdote...

On Sun, 17 Sep 1995, Brian Davis wrote:

> Phill obviously presents one point of view, vigorously and well.  What do 
> the rest of you think about a teen who, say, busts into a .edu site, 
> plays with the files, and ultimately brings the system down entirely for 
> 36 hours?  Fun and games?  Send him to his room, sans modem? Prosecute 
> him?  Have a TLA hire him???

If it wasn't for ITAR the Net would already have secure encryption and
authentication, and most such hacker attacks would be impossible (or at 
least impractical).

		Mark

On Tue, 19 Sep 1995, Rev. Mark Grant wrote:

> On Sun, 17 Sep 1995, Brian Davis wrote:
> 
> > Phill obviously presents one point of view, vigorously and well.  What do 
> > the rest of you think about a teen who, say, busts into a .edu site, 
> > plays with the files, and ultimately brings the system down entirely for 
> > 36 hours?  Fun and games?  Send him to his room, sans modem? Prosecute 
> > him?  Have a TLA hire him???
> 
> If it wasn't for ITAR the Net would already have secure encryption and
> authentication, and most such hacker attacks would be impossible (or at 
> least impractical).
> 
> 		Mark

The non-responsive answer is stricken from the record.  :-)
You mean "secure" as Netscape was secure from sameer et al.?

Apples and oranges answer to my perhaps-not-so-hypothetical question.  

Still waiting for a serious response ...

Brian

> 
> On Tue, 19 Sep 1995, Rev. Mark Grant wrote:
> 
> > On Sun, 17 Sep 1995, Brian Davis wrote:
> > 
> > > Phill obviously presents one point of view, vigorously and well.  What do 
> > > the rest of you think about a teen who, say, busts into a .edu site, 
> > > plays with the files, and ultimately brings the system down entirely for 
> > > 36 hours?  Fun and games?  Send him to his room, sans modem? Prosecute 
> > > him?  Have a TLA hire him???
> > 
> > If it wasn't for ITAR the Net would already have secure encryption and
> > authentication, and most such hacker attacks would be impossible (or at 
> > least impractical).
> > 
> > 		Mark
> 
> The non-responsive answer is stricken from the record.  :-)
> You mean "secure" as Netscape was secure from sameer et al.?
> 

	The first two hacks listed on my web page were made possible
because of ITAR. Without ITAR Netscape would not have been suspectible
to this attack.
	Two out of three fits my definition of "most".

-- 
sameer						Voice:   510-601-9777
Community ConneXion				FAX:	 510-601-9734
An Internet Privacy Provider			Dialin:  510-658-6376
http://www.c2.org (or login as "guest")			sameer@c2.org

On Tue, 19 Sep 1995, Rev. Mark Grant wrote:

>
> If it wasn't for ITAR the Net would already have secure encryption and
> authentication, and most such hacker attacks would be impossible (or at 
> least impractical).
> 

	As someone who has hacked a little I would say that sloppy coding 
(much like netscape's) has helped hackers far more than lack of 
encryption.  Imagine for a moment if sun had included some form of 
encryption (maybe in nfs ?) in sunos 4.x.x,  would it have been 
effective if it had as many holes as sendmail, etc.. ?

	Good algorithms well coded will hurt hackers. Good algorithms 
slopply coded will simply provide hackers with one more toy to abuse, 
while giving average people a false since of security (but you SAID it 
was strong crypto, so why did they get my credit card number ?)


 pUFF