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McOwen Case Settled
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.
Hacking in??? What version of the case did you read?!
He installed unauthorised and inappropriate software. Same thing could have happened if he'd installed Quake, but only played it during off hours.
Regardless of the end goal (research?), SETI is effectively entertainment software from the client side. It serves no useful function for the company whose machines he ran it on.
He deserved and got a slap on the wrist. Not a bad settlement all round.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
Actually, he was running RC5. The problem the school had with this is that with RC5, there is a change (albeit a very limited one) that you could win money. He had not stated that he would give the money to the school...
p c&s=50009562&f=122097561&m=1110950822 p c&s=50009562&f=122097561&m=7450963242&r=5150986242 #5150986242 = 39&threadid=518510&start=1 = 39&threadid=518184
This was widely discussed among many of the more well known distributed computing teams. Check it out.
Read about it here:
http://arstechnica.infopop.net/OpenTopic/page?a=t
http://arstechnica.infopop.net/OpenTopic/page?a=t
http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.cfm?catid
http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.cfm?catid
Glen
Track your fuel economy
It might be helpful to think of the sysadmin as more of a caretaker of the system, rather than as an absolute master of the machine. Owen's job (as I understand it) was to maintain the systems in a running state to provide computing services to faculty, staff, and students. While this occasionally includes installing software, it does not include installing software that is not necessary to the mission of the school.
The presumption that he was the absolute master of the machines was in error. In this case, the System Administrator's job was not to set policy, but rather to advise. You would do well to clarify whether this is the administration policy with whatever company you work for.
Owen's got lucky - and probably got about what he deserved for screwing around with state equipment.
To celebrate the occasion of my 1000th post, I will post no more forever on Slashdot. Goodbye.
And thank god for that.
Production systems are controlled environments - last thing you need is some unaudited, unexpected and unauthorised changes messing them up.
Cheers,
Ian
Wow! I'm sitting on a friggin' gold mine. Who in their right mind would ever pay upwards of $35 for ONE MINUTE of time on a PC?? You can buy a good system that's paid for itself in just one hour of time!! Lets see, going by the usual inflated legal dollers, this 1.5Ghz P4 I've been burning in for the last two weeks has just wasted $713,000. boggle.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
Having full system access (such as 'root' on a *NIX box) does not always translate into having full authority (i.e. direct permission from real humans) to do all actions that are permitted by that level of access. The anti-hacking law he was charged under most likely has a clause about using a computer system in excess of the user's authority.
For example, while a sysadmin may have root access to a system that he must maintain, he may not necessarily be permitted to use that access to snoop through the VP's mail spool. Similarly, a McDonald's employee that has the restaurant keys so he can lock up at night is still trespassing if he abuses those keys to throw a wild party there at 4am. Finally, it's still car theft if a chauffer decides to just drive away with the car that he's got full physical access to.
What it all boils down to is how explicitly defined the sysadmin's authority was in this matter.