Aucbcory.222 net.followup utcsrgv!utzoo!decvax!ucbvax!ARPAVAX:CAD:ESVAX:Cory:c153-3ad Wed Mar 10 14:17:58 1982 Universities and Security Presumably the San Francisco Examiner would instruct all CS professors to instruct their students to stop all behavior oriented towards break- ing security. Well, [1] As long as computers run reasonably powerful operating systems, security holes will exist. [2] Many such holes cannot be fixed until thy are found by users in the field. [3] Someone, somewhere, will always be trying to find these holes. Hence, it's much better to find holes on systems without real money (i.e., bank systems) like University computers then to wait for some particular hole to be found by an embezzler. The (re)discovery of the Block Retransmit hole actually ENHANCES computer security. The counter-argument, that if "students don't find these holes, nobody will", sounds like the "if we pass gun control laws, criminals will voluntarily turn in their guns" line to me: hopelessly naive. Michael Chastain ----------------------------------------------------------------- gopher://quux.org/ conversion by John Goerzen of http://communication.ucsd.edu/A-News/ This Usenet Oldnews Archive article may be copied and distributed freely, provided: 1. There is no money collected for the text(s) of the articles. 2. The following notice remains appended to each copy: The Usenet Oldnews Archive: Compilation Copyright (C) 1981, 1996 Bruce Jones, Henry Spencer, David Wiseman.