desnoyer@Apple.COM (Peter Desnoyers) (11/10/88)
I was just wondering... Could any one of us take a piece of code that we had written, stand up in court with it, and prove authorship beyond reasonable doubt? How much harder would it be if the author was not cooperative? (i.e. plead innocent) Peter Desnoyers
urjlew@ecsvax.uncecs.edu (Rostyk Lewyckyj) (11/12/88)
Let's review a couple of items
1. His father is a highly placed computer security expert.
2. There is a reasonably large published literature on viruses,
and other means of penetrating computer security.
3. Most if not all computer (black thumb) penetrators get hired
as security consultants.
4. His worm is noticed because it lacks a timer to slow its activity
to below the notice threshold.
5. He does not try it on an isolated system of machines.
And more pertinently how does it get out if it is not intentionally
set loose?
6. As a graduate student he does need to think of a future job.
No I don't for a moment think that Mr. Morris junior had any evil
intents to harm any system. He may even have done the UNIX world
a favor. Though perhaps it would be better to have let the sleeping
dog lie, rather than perhaps have it wake other dogs that may be
more vicious.
However I need to be convinced that this was an experiment that
got out of hand by accident. Perhaps he should not be punished as
a criminal. But I think that he should pay some monitary fine and
be legally enjoined from accepting a computer security related
position for a period of say ten years. In some sense a parole.
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Reply-To: Rostyslaw Jarema Lewyckyj
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