[comp.admin.policy] 3rd-party rudeness

brendan@cs.widener.edu (Brendan Kehoe) (06/26/91)

rickert@mp.cs.niu.edu wrote:
>  Attempting to anonymous ftp to my site is rude at worst.  Using my site
>to do something rude to another site is an abuse of privileges.  If he wants
>to pay for his own computer and connection, the rudeness is his problem.

I agree completely with your position, Neil; but there's a problem
with what you just said. If I were to, say, do
	finger bill@foo.bar.com@cs.niu.edu
then try mary and steve and don, how've I abused privileges at your
site?

A different analogy to the FTP-roaming would be, perhaps, calling up
every Unix site you can find and trying to log in as nuucp, on the off
chance that the site has anonymous UUCP archives. Tho in this case,
you're paying for the activity, rather than dispersing it among the
many interim places packets will go before reaching an anon FTP site.

-- 
     Brendan Kehoe - Widener Sun Network Manager - brendan@cs.widener.edu
  Widener University in Chester, PA                A Bloody Sun-Dec War Zone
Top Ten Surprises in Rocky V -- Number 5, Loveable Character Chewbacca Dies

rickert@mp.cs.niu.edu (Neil Rickert) (06/26/91)

In article <NX0=QNA@cs.widener.edu> brendan@cs.widener.edu (Brendan Kehoe) writes:
>rickert@mp.cs.niu.edu wrote:
>>  Attempting to anonymous ftp to my site is rude at worst.  Using my site
>>to do something rude to another site is an abuse of privileges.  If he wants
>>to pay for his own computer and connection, the rudeness is his problem.
>
>I agree completely with your position, Neil; but there's a problem
>with what you just said. If I were to, say, do
>	finger bill@foo.bar.com@cs.niu.edu
>then try mary and steve and don, how've I abused privileges at your
>site?

  You haven't.  Finger is provided for those kinds of inquiries.  But if
you set up an automatic script to finger my site every five minutes so
you can trace activity you most certainly are abusing this facility
and you and others are going to start getting "connection refused".

  But this has nothing to do with ftp.  If anonymous ftp used a different
port number so that on failure you got a 'connection refused', then the
only abuse is in network bandwidth, which the student had tried to control.
However the way ftp works, the student is splattering "invalid login attempt"
messages all over the Internet.  Many sites take a dim view of these attempts.

  The Internet is based on an implicit social contract of cooperation.  In
this case there was a clear violation of that contract.  Exactly what he did
is not the issue.  It is how his acts are perceived.

  As I see it, there are many different ways this students activities
can be stopped:

	1.	He can be persuaded to stop them.
	2.	Restrictions on his computer access can stop them.
	3.	The campus routers can be programmed to not accept
		packets from this host.
	4.	The ethernet cable to this host can be pulled.
	5.	The campus external Internet leased line arrangements
		can be cancelled.

  Now I control items 1 and 2.  Methods 3,4 or 5 are controlled by people
with stiffly starched shirts and pin stripe suits.  As I decide whether to
act on 1. or 2., I am thinking about the reactions of these starch and
pin stripers when they start getting complaints from NASA, from the DOE
labs, etc.  When they get those complaints they are going to be thinking
about research grants, about the muckrakers from the press, about the
board of regents, the state board of higher education, and the state
legislature.

  Notice I said "when they start getting complaints", not "if ...".  Some
people at these sights have hair trigger reactions.

  So in sum, the question of whether the student is going to be cut off simply
does not arise.  That is a forgone conclusion.  It is a question only of how
he will be cut off.  Now I much prefer choices 1 or 2 (preferably 1) to all
of the other options.

-- 
=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=
  Neil W. Rickert, Computer Science               <rickert@cs.niu.edu>
  Northern Illinois Univ.
  DeKalb, IL 60115                                   +1-815-753-6940