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McOwen Case Settled

Posted by michael on from the hardly-any-bloodshed dept.

ewilts writes: "Back in July, you ran a story about David McOwen, a computer adminstrator at DeKalb Technical College in Georgia, who was being charged for installing SETI software on school computers. This case has now been settled. See also the EFF press release on McOwen's web site." Update: 01/18 16:11 GMT by M : It was software from distributed.net, not SETI.

5 of 286 comments (clear)

  1. Already in Slashback by UCRowerG · · Score: 4, Informative

    This story has been convered in a recent Slashback article: here.

  2. Re:$2100 and 80 hours community service by Hougaard · · Score: 4, Informative

    Distributed.net

    He ran the dnetc.exe client on a ton of school PC's in Georgia.

    The funny thing, is that it took several "security experts" a lot of work to figure out what dnetc.exe actually was :)

  3. It wasn't SETI@home! by jonnythan · · Score: 5, Informative

    A lot of people seem to be under the impression that the client he was running was SETI@home and was therefore innoculous.

    Well, he was running some distrubuted.net-type decryption client where he would have WON MONEY had he been the one to find a key.

    Not so humanitarian and innoculous now, is it?

    Years in prison and a $400,000 fine are extremely way beyond reason, but I can see how this was a crime as he stole company resources for personal gain.

    The $2100 fine does seem reasonable as I think he would have won $2000.

  4. Re:Powerful implications by anthony_dipierro · · Score: 5, Informative

    Although he got off relatively light, the precident set here is that sysadmins can no longer choose to install software at will.

    The case was settled out of court. Absolutely no precedent was set.

  5. Distributed.net trojans and worms by melquiades · · Score: 4, Informative

    Production systems are controlled environments - last thing you need is some unaudited, unexpected and unauthorised changes messing them up.

    ...or opening up a security hole.

    Every piece of software installed present a potential threat. Did it come from a reliable source? Does it have security flaws? Obviously, there has a be a reasonable balance between maintaining security and giving users the flexibility they need to do their jobs. I get very irritated when a company won't let me install software I need -- or just want! -- on my desktop at work.

    This balance tips increasingly in favor of security as if installation is (1) on a server, (2) on a production server, (3) on a lot of machines. Maintaining that balance is a sysadmin's job. And this guy was definitely not doing his job.

    All that said, aren't criminal charges just a little out of line? He should just have been professionally reprimanded, or maybe fired. But a lawsuit?