Ask Fyodor Your Network Security Questions

Fyodor is the driving force behind Insecure.org and the top-rated Nmap network exploration and security auditing tool. He's also involved in The Honeynet Project (and is a coauthor of the project's book, Honeynet: Revealing the Security Tools, Tactics, and Motives of the Blackhat Community). One question per post, please. We'll run Fyodor's answers to 10 of the highest-moderated questions as soon as he gets them back to us.

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Linux Booth Babe and Sdem

[egg troll]

Fyodor,

Thank you for taking the time to answer questions from the Slashdot community. A while back a Slashbot named Sub Duex Ex Machina (aka Sdem) created an account in the persona of a very attractive Linux booth babe. Apparently at some point there was some serious flirtation between you and this booth babe.

Once the truth was revealed, you were understandably angry at Sdem, and you proceeded to hack into his poorly secured W2K box. Although you did nothing malicious to it, you did post screenshots of his various goings-on to your website.

My question for you is this: Although Sdem's actions were rather sleazy, I'm wondering how far you can go to retaliate. Do you have a moral and ethical priviledge to access another persons computer? If so, how far can you go in your actions once you've accessed it? While meer screenshots are fairly harmless, would you have been justified in deleting his hard drive?

Thanks!