Slashdot Mirror
University Of Calgary To Offer Course On Spam
jrcsnet writes "CBC is reporting that the University of Calgary is going to be adding yet another controversial course (The first, on computer viruses, was covered on Slashdot a while back). According to the article, 'Students will be taught how to write programs that create e-mail spam as well as spy software.' While there must be some benefit for everyone else by creating programs to work against these nuisances, is it worth the risk to the rest of us or even to the potential careers of the graduates of the course?"
One day when spam is truly prosecutable, these graduates might find themselves the first to be questioned :)
What's next? A course on editing child porn photos digitally?
Rock that crushes, Paper & Scissors that don't matter.
I say we just nuke every spammer we find.
For you Americans... Alberta is basically all of your middle states combined. Lots of Right-Wing rednecks with oil.
How to beat the living shit out of the professor who thought this up...
seriously tho, i can understand for people wanting to learn how to as a post college course but at university level i can see this being put to evil
Fantastic...a curriculum has finally been designed that will allow students to pay their own way through university, creating and running spam generators!
It's things like this that keep the word 'almost' in my motto 'I'm almost always proud to be Canadian'.
If you feed a spammer you a ter'rist!
If you learn this spamming course thingy you a real ter'rist and I'll get yer spamming ass dead er alive!
God bless America.
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
Are the administrators there stupid, or just REALLY that greedy?
Please mod down. This is not really so much as flame bate as it is totally OFF TOPIC!!!
Life is not for the lazy.
Does this mean I can start to expect spam advertising that I can now get a non-accredited degree on how to spam others?
Either this is some kinda freaky pyramid scheme or I just entered the Twilight Zone...
well, ya see they got this spam-writin' course i'm thinkin about joinin up for.
Wouldn't it be more productive to study ways to combat spam? From simple Bayesian techniques to graph theoretic methods? That would teach you a lot of theory and principles you could apply to other courses as well. Right now, it just sounds like they're just doing this for attention...
- sm
What's next? A course on editing child porn photos digitally?
Next are courses on Recreational Pharmaceutical Agriculture, Distribution, and Marketing.
From: http://www.ucalgary.ca/it/self_help/email/spam/
"The University of Calgary's Computing Policy prohibits U of C users from spamming others. If you receive spam that originated at the University of Calgary, please report it to abuse@ucalgary.ca."
I wonder if someone should inform the IT department.
win32Api I and win32api II
I happen to chat online occasionally with people who run blogspammer software, and their response to the rel="nofollow" thing to combat blog spam was, "That's history. We're already on to the next thing."
I don't know how much of that is bullshit, and how much is true, but I think that it's important to always be looking for the new potential ways to get spam through so defenses can be prepared before the deluge.
500GB of disk, 5TB of transfer, $5.95/mo
is it worth the risk ... to the potential careers of the graduates of the course?
They're the ones who choose to take the course.
Don't blame me -- I voted for Roslin.
Uh-huh yeah sure we've heard that sort of thing before. Seems more to me like a certain university is getting a lot of funding from companies that make penis enlargement pills.
Anyway has anyone met any college students lately? Try hanging out in Cancun or Daytona during spring break some time: do we really want these kinds of people running loose with the knowledge of how to make spam software and spyware programs? May as well give them loaded machine guns and hand grenades. I am shocked and appalled at yet another example of the intellecutal irresponsibility of so-called "College Professors".
This kind of information is avilable anywhere really. You could run a google search and get a tutorial on creating a spam cannon server. If someone wants to become a spammer, they can do it without the class.
The attractive aspect here is that these students will know the tricks of the trade when it comes to spamming, and you know what they say: It takes a thief to catch a thief.
Would I pay the 300USD pricetag (Which is the going rate for a 3 hour course at my school, plus books) to take this class? No. But the same is said by many students about Archery, Chess, Basket Weaving and many other classes that are seen as electives.
Let's fake an answer for the curious; let's fake it all for the fame.
Where you were taught theory and higher level thought about subjects. Now we are having people go to college for the pure reason to get a job when they graduate.
What has happened to education?
...create a signature that advertises Free iPods and such after every forum post.
(Directed at no one in particular. Besides I actually like the company's Free Condoms offer...)
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
According to TFA,
Some companies are run by idiots.
How are people supposed to write security software if they don't know malware works? And how can one really learn how malware works without writing some?
When I worked on a firewall project years ago, I wrote some code to test it versus SYN floods. Where we supposed to just do a theoretic analysis and say "sure, it's safe against this attack"?
When I'm not hacking, among the other things I do is teach karate. That includes playing the attacker sometime for my students to defend. And sometimes they play the attacker for other students. It's the only way to learn.
(Of course in both hacking and budo there are legitimate safety issues. While there aren't enough details in TFA to say for sure, it sounds like they've addressed them.)
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Let's see.. I learn about: * The SMTP protocol. * How to telnet in to an SMTP server * How it will accept any input as to who I am without checking it, and send mail. * How to write a shell script to automate the above Oh wait.. I can already do that. This better be a 1 credit course. But seriously, it gives these students information about why we have a spam problem, and vital background information so that they can fix it. These students are e-mail users themselves (most spammers aren't, and the one I heard on NPR that is uses I Hate Spam(R) :-)
These students hate spam just as much as we do.
Gmail, anyone? Automatic Bayesian Filtering across many users.. works great.
--Sam
Aycock acknowledges there is a potential for viruses and other malicious software to spread outside the classroom.
He says that's why there are precautions, such as security cameras and a ban on all outside electronic equipment in the classroom.
Each student signs a legal form that says a breach of the security means an automatic "F" and a potential criminal investigation.
I guess they think that there is a high risk that a person will intentionally wreak havoc with the knowledge he learns in that class. Then again, this might just be a publicity thing for the class. I doubt that it's more dangerous than a class on computer security and virus/malware prevention in terms of the risk of damage being done.
--
Free iPod? Try a free Mac Mini
Or a free Nintendo DS
Wired article as proof
"Applicants from American high schools will only be considered on the basis of acceptable scores (no score below 400) on the Verbal (effective Spring 2005 Critical Reading and/or Writing) and Mathematics New SAT." From the University's website. With such high SAT requirements I doubt the course is going to be anything short of remarkable. *cough*sarcasm*cough*
Hmmm...I guess the university simply spams people saying "enroll for our spamming class". Who else would want to sign up? Oh the cruel irony...
"He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lampposts...for support rather than illumination." - Andrew Lang
Somehow I think that thought came subliminally from a name like John Aycock...
(If you are Prof. Aycock, I'm referring to the tendency of teenagers like me to notice certain four-letter words in names for unknown reasons. I apologize for any harm this post may have caused you. Thank you.)
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
People are upset because a university is teaching courses on viruses and spam engines?
You know, if I wanted to learn how to murder someone, probably the best thing I could do is train to be a cop. Or a forensics investigator. Or maybe even a doctor. That's where I'm most likely to learn the skills necessary to help me get away with murder.
Problem is, those classes are also where I'm most likely to learn the skills necessary to prevent a murder, or to save a life, or to bring a murderer to justice.
So what should we do: prohibit universities from teaching skills that might be put to bad use? What would that leave? Philosophy and creative writing?
Sure, someone will argue: but spam engines don't have any good use! You can't save someone's life by learning how to write a spam engine! But I can guarantee you that most of the people who work to block spam engines and stop illegal spammers knows how those spam engines work. They learned it somewhere. Tell me why a university shouldn't be one of the places to acquire those skills.
And certain people who design operating systems should probably take more of those courses in how viruses work. Might keep them from having to release new security patches every eleven days.
What he wants is more important that what I want. What he wants is also more important that what you want.
programmers writing viruses and spamming tools as there are now if there were more good paying jobs for people who like to program? It doesn't matter what you teach people ...it matters what you pay them to do with their skill.
SLASHDOT: news for people who can't concentrate on work or have no life at all and got tired of yelling back at the TV.
Ahh the pride I feel deep inside that my hometown University will be the first to offer courses that increases the wonderful "incr3ase your m3mber!!!!11" and the ever helpful "w@nt a collage degree!?11" messages.
If they're teaching ethics along with it, then awesome. Knowledge is power.
Trying to discourage the spread of knowledge doesn't make the world a better place. Teaching people to use their skills wisely does.
$pAM 1O1?
Can you imagine going to a doctor who's never studied viruses? Knowing how easy it would be for a contagion to spread across the globe and wipe everyone out, do you think it's a good idea for money-hungry corporations to be playing around w/ virus strains in their labs? Would you support sending American troops to Iraq w/out showing them how easy it is to build an Improvised Explosive Device out of pretty much anything that needs batteries?
Yeah, I didn't think so.
Every single computer scientist in training should have a fundamental understanding of computer security. And if learning means doing, then computer scientists should be taught how to write viruses, send spam and remotely 0wn b0xes. And don't let them graduate if they can't.
[o]_O
First, I don't really mind the idea. I think it's probably a good one.
But one thing I find amusing is the idea of keeping physical securit to the site. Surely if we've learned one thing recently, it's the value of knowledge. Keeping them from taking a floppy disc hope isn't going to make a lick of difference here. Except that, I guess, it might give the university some distance if a criminal investigation against one of the students is launched.
I dunno, Calgary Alberta is where all the Canadian oil biz people work, and teach new generations of students to pump Greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. What's a little spam destroying the Internet compared to a lot of CO2 destroying the species?
--
make install -not war
I say give all the students who pass a "B". If they come up with a usable solution that passes the slashdot "check list" test, give them an A+.
So far, everyone has posted on how this is such a bad idea and every graduate is going to turn into a spammer.
People, there's a forest in these trees!
Listen, if I'm a programmer, and I took my normal devry programming course, I have no idea what a syn flood is, nor have they taught me anything to do with the basics of a buffer overflow.
Classes taught to exploit these types of vulnerabilites assure that every student *knows in his/her soul* how things can be exploited. They know exactly how a stack can be overwritten, exactly where to find the return address to overwrite. With this information, and this *big picture* understanding, it will make the better coders in the long run.
Compare most blackhats with most whitehats. What do you seen? You see blackhats with crazy abilities to not only forsee vulnerabilites, but also an intimate understanding of how to exploit them. Most whitehats are just people who know enough not to use insecure commands.
Personally, I'm glad Mr. Venema knows more about average vulnerabilites than current Mr. Joe State University graduate, because he knows how things are exploited (Obviously. Look at TCT, Postfix, TCP Wrappers).
If the average developer *knew* something about programming, maybe we'd actually be better off.
Can any good POSSIBLY come of this?!
Sure, maybe we'll get another SpamAssassin or SpyBot out of it, but... Arrgh! The fewer people know how to spam effectively, the better. Now Joe Blo, looking fow a quick buck, can go to UC for a year, then try to set up... Maybe that's not a quick buck after all, but still... Arrgh!
"Know thy enemy" some smartyman wrote before the maniacs disembarked from the Mayflower.. .
.
Eh.. . What? Oh noes! Knowledge is bad, bad, bad!
Let me stop right there before I sound just like an incriminated Jackson..
Has it occured to the general pubic yet that your high-school biology and chemistry classes enables you to mass murder using common and readily available household materials?
But still.. . You haven't.. . Weird, isn't it?
This space is powered by Google Ad-nauseam.
http://pages.cpsc.ucalgary.ca/~aycock/spam.html
It's just another way for the university to make money. Seriously, if they have to go to school to learn how to write this software, they aren't a danger to us, anyhow.
My lame blog.
Yes, it's true that no one assumes anymore that cops et al. are taught the things they're taught for the purpose of killing someone. So it that sense, my logic is somewhat reversed. But it is not true that cops and forensic investigators especially (perhaps less so with doctors) do not learn how to kill people. They most definitely do. Haven't you seen those silhouette targets cops use on the shooting range? Tell me those aren't designed to teach them how to bring a man down somewhat permanently. So, half a point.
The best way to be a doctor is not to learn how to kill someone, of course. But I would certainly hope that any doctor into whose hands I put my life is well-versed and highly-trained in identifying the things that might kill me, and how they work. And that analogy extends to my computer: I certainly hope the people I'm trusting to keep my systems safe are well-versed and highly-trained in the things that might bring them down. Or even merely annoy me. And I don't even mind if they learn that stuff at the University of Calgary.
What he wants is more important that what I want. What he wants is also more important that what you want.
Might be marked as a troll but the post brings up something that illustrates the opposite point from what it intended? You can't teach bomb defusal without teaching explosives.
I've got your attention, I RUN A SPYWARE COURSE!
we're cool.
Know Thy Enemy
-Charles
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
Writing mass-mailer SMTP client is trivial.
You don't actually need to do anything, there are excellent SMTP components in all frameworks. You just need to write code to randomize subjects, attachment names, seemingly plausible content, and scan the Winblows machine in question for address books. The couple of most common formats will do.
Then the part about getting it to run.. for my hypothetical win32.Goatse email worm that changes the background image to hello.jpg I would not even have to resort to holes in outlook or anything. Just send the executable. In a perfect world mail servers would drop win32 executables automatically, but this is not widespread policy.
Let it pop up a requester: 'This attachment is executable content. Are you sure you want to run it?' [Yes]/No
'To provide better support to the goatse community, do you want to send unsolicidated email?' [Yes]/No
'Do you want to install desktop shortcuts?' [Yes]/No
'Do you want goatseMailer to run automatically upon Windows startup?' [Yes]/No
If this was launched late sunday evening, the number of goatse'd background imaged would reach thousands easily. Windows users ARE that stupid.
'Once scientists, even the dim-witted social scientists, get muzzled, the Western Civilization is finished.' - oldhack
FYI : Calgary is in Canada.
+5, Informative. I thought it was in Australia but it turns out that I confused it with Cangary.
Is there a mailing list somewhere??
FREE VIAGRA! Click here.
[reply]
Dude, you're supposed to spam people OUTSIDE THE SCHOOL, YOU MORON!
(Click)
Message sent.
It is really sad that "socialists" think it is OK to keep knowledge hidden because they think it is the _knowledge_ that is bad.
Well, I am here to tell you that it is not the knowledge. What if I were to post right now how to make a _very_ simple explosive. Would that mean that anyone that read this post would be "bad" or "potentially bad"?
To all you socialists out there... repeat after me
IT IS NOT KNOWLEDGE THAT MAKES SOMETHING BAD! IT IS THE PERSON _WITH_ THAT KNOWLEDGE THAT DOES SOMETHING BAD.
Basically if _every_ computer user in the world knew how to send millions of anonymous spam mails every day, that knowledge of how to do that is _not_ bad. It is the person exploiting that knowledge that is bad.
To put it in simple cave-man language:
If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land,
it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. -James Madison
Save the whales.
Dear John , I pray God Almight this message reaches you in wonderful spirit. J01n. Uni vers1ty of Calg ary today.. CL1CK HERE L3ARN +he.tricks of Spam?ers FREE TRIAL Thankyou for your assistance, opt out 18723876232323891238947892Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2462.0000 Sun, 06 Feb 2005 10:59:36 -0400 buckhorn creosote deja camden lucrative forgetful export asset agenda chantey welt therapeutic daughter shrivel gentile
I don't see how this is really any differant then my current school (Iowa State University) which offers classes such as 'Information Warfare' which is pretty much hacking as a weapon against others. A standing assignment for the entire class is to crack into the Profs. computer, the class has been offered to 4th year students and grad students and its yet to be broken into. Automatic A to anyone who gets in though.
No smoking sigs indoors.
I do like this program because I understand that to beat the system you have to know how it works. But on the flip side of the coin, the spam companies now know exactly where to go to get the next batch of programmers to get their penis enlargement, low refi rates, get a free xbox, hot young chicks get nekkid messages to the masses.
"Plans are for fools! Oglethorpe, the plutonian (Aqua Teen Hunger Force)
The university of Calgary has great hog farming courses as well....thats why I go to UBC, heck even Edmonchuck U of A has a better faculty.
The University of Calgary was the first to standarize a library of text files to test compression programs. It's known as the Calgary Corpus.
Given this, I'd say that Calgary always keeps ahead of other universities in innovation. And certainly we want virus and spam writers on OUR SIDE. i.e. College graduates (versus socially-inadapted anarchists and script-kiddies). Who knows if one of these guys will later make the ultimate anti-spam tool? Remember that the Reed College graduate, Peter Norton, became so famous for his Antivirus tool.
Yes, but you can't teach bomb defusal without teaching someone how a bomb is built, and what each part of it does. Unless your defusal only includes placing the bomb inside one of those giant metal spheres and blowing it up. In which case it requires knowing about explosives.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
http://pages.cpsc.ucalgary.ca/~aycock/spam.html
the actually format of this course I don't know, but obviously in order for programmers to create spam filters, they need to know how spammers spam this is true for everything, a good cop needs to know how to be a criminal, in order to stop one. i could go on with examples but ya get the picture
Signatures are so 90s
As a Seahawk fan I'd like to point out that your state is already circling the bowl anyway. And there are bigger ass-hats in the republican party. Elect him, it makes all 15 of us actual Seahawk fans in Seattle feel good.
"g3t uR d3gr33 N0W!!! f1nd 0ut h0w t0 3arn $$$$ by s3nding SPAM!!!"
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
Compiler construction is the other gem that he teaches. Now THAT class is malicious ;)
I'm sure he'll be mentioning this in class on Tuesday morning inbetween his usual bad puns.
"It will be similar to an existing course where students learn how to create computer viruses. The aim is to develop new ways to fight these online nuisances."
The sky isn't falling, Chicken Little.
If you don't understand how something like spam begins and propagates, how are you supposed to fight it? Nothing to see here, move along.
Outlaw people, not software. :-)
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
You know, I was raised in Manitoba/Ontatio, and for all of my life I've been hearing the stereotype perpetuated by the parent. I just moved here (Calgary) a few months back, and I have to tell you, this province is anything but. Maybe it's the hippie influence from BC, maybe it's just that most Canadians don't really travel anywhere, and get 99% of their information from the Toronto-centric CBC.
If this province is right-wing, well at least they've done right-wing "right" (ie: correctly). The taxes here are lower than almost anywhere, people are in general more prosperous than anywhere I've ever been, we have an incredible public transportation system, some of the best roads in the country, an AMAZING parks system, some of the cleanest air I've ever breathed, North America's largest urban park (and mostly natural, too, although in this neck of the woods that basically means prarie grass), an incredibly healthy and athletic population, one of the lowest unemployment rates in the country...
By and large, the government seems to want to keep out of people's lives (contrast this with the "right" down south these days). About the only thing, and I admit it really pisses me off, is the provincial government's opposition to gay marriage.
I also work for one of the big oil companies out here, and from what I've seen, things are a hell of a lot different than they were in the past. I got to go on a field tour of our seismic lines recently (natural gas exploration), and was completely blown away as to the steps taken NOT to destroy the environment. It's really amazing - the people marching through the bush running wires etc are trained to bend tree branches out of their way, as opposed to breaking them off. Zero-impact indeed.
In short, for those that don't live here, don't listen to what you're told. Alberta is pretty much the polar opposite of what you hear on TV. Well, we do have the Stampede still, and some people wear cowboy hats during it. Whoopdee do.
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
...is the people who say, "Hey, white hat hackers are OK because they break into systems for the fun of it, and to teach you the weaknesses in your system," but for the life of my I cannot explain just why it reminds me of it.
Hopefully, the school's CS degree program also has a hefty ethics course requirement.
One must study viruses, how they work, and how they are written, in order to work on antiviruses. One must study spam, including how to do it, in order to work on ways to combat it. I don't understand how some people here seriously think this will lead these kids directly into the "dark side" once they graduate. They sound just like the idiots who were totally against sex education in school. Education is the best way to combat many things. Sure, maybe one student among many will dream up a new, more malicious, spam/virus technique with help from these courses. But don't we all say "security through obscurity is pointless"?
Loban Amaan Rahman ==> Anagram of ==> Aha! An Abnormal Man!
It's the same philosphy that all the computer hacking / security courses I took in college followed. If you're going to be a system administrator, you HAVE to know how people are going to try to break into your system, so you can prevent it.
The responsibilty of schools are to teach. It's the responsibility of the student to use the knowledge responsibly.
How much lethal knowledge do you think your average doctor (MD) has?
UTF-8: There and Back Again
What skills have you got?
...Spam
While there must be some benefit for everyone else by creating programs to work against these nuisances, is it worth the risk to the rest of us or even to the potential careers of the graduates of the course?
No, it's not worth the risk. Any knowledge that could be used for evil must be supressed. Knowledge is bad.
Seriously, what kind of question is that? Are you suggesting that ignorance is the best approach to combating spam? Should we stop teaching say, chemistry, so there's no chance people will learn to make dangerous chemicals? I learned to make thermite in high school, after all. "It might be risky, we'd better not teach it" is a quick road to never teaching anything.
Considering that these gradutaes would know the nook and corner of the field which a potential spammer knows by heart and hence as a consequence would be able to stop spam (or device methods to stop it) more effectively, is it not possible that a small percentage of these graduates would be lured into the spam industry. Considering that even 1 % of the graduates gets lured, that would be one out of a 100 qualified people spamming our mailboxes. Think what might happen when the number increases to thousands if other colleges follows suit. /.'ers here know any other way? Are we solving something or just creating another paradox?!
However, we musn't quit after saying just this. I believe that to combat spam in the future, we would need people who are experts in this field, in other words graduates who knows the nooks and corners of spam. And if we look that way then we have to accept the above. Does any
the neo-cons here are just so rabid "pro-corporationists" to the total exclusion of any sign of either humanity or integrity that any chance there might be that this course would be interesting or useful is quite dismissible. It's really sad but the university here really sucks, it's poorly run by overpaid and ineffective suits who care little or nothing for science or education. IMHO, it's just a overpriced country club and diploma mill kind of place.
students are great tho
... and keep the door open for all the sysadmins gone postal... enjoy the show...
Here is the profs webpage and the link to his new course.
The prof is a pretty cool guy but his jokes are AWEFUL! (If you are reading this Dr. Aycock, I'm just kidding. :P)
I'm also Calgarian and I gotta disagree.
Klein is running public services into the ground despite the fact that our provincial debt is completely gone (so this giant surplus can actually go towards services again). I suspect he's doing this so he can save the day by privatising them.
Also, while young people are often liberal, I see religious nuts that are as bad as when I lived in Houston.
I rarely criticize things I don't care about.
Is that what goes with my ham?
Anyways, why add more wood to the fire? aren't there enough jobs being outsorced to India?? The solution: create more need for IT people... right? So more americnas are hired... right?? So we just add more spammers to the world so that administrators, executives and the like who know jack shit about computers and only care for saving a buck or two... millions just go out and guess what??? Let's outsource to india because it is cheap!!!
Next thing you know you end up calling tech support and you get a friendly, heavy accent english speaking person from India who can't give you his last name (DELL), makes you call back again and again (DELL anyone?) until after 10 calls you finally get a person who's first language is english. THEN they can tell you: ohh, yes you are right... you are screwed (just an example).
Now picture this... a lot of people actually sing up for those virus, spyware, spam classes and ten years later you wake up in your all modern, fully electronic and automatized house... flat screens and digital panels everywhere, you go to the kitchen to get somethin to eat, get the newspaper, sit down and the computer that controls the house asks you... "What would you like with your spam today sir?"... AHHHHHH!!!!!!!!! Yes, very Microsnotish (MicroSnot, I mean M$) All of this while being watched by the cameras and every movement scrutinized by sensors that know exactly what you do all day, every day, the whole year. The "smart" fridge with the 20" plasma display that tells you when the milk is about to run out shows 25 different comercials about milk... just because you have the right to choose (yeah right) The last thing I want is to be hit by spam every day so PLEASE make clases so that people can learn how to better hit SPAM in my face as much as possible.
Shouldn't there be a law that prohibits the waste of resources? I mean, even just paper spam that you get in the mail is bad enough because not every body recycles that paper. Now what about wasted bandwidth? What about buisesses loosing money because their employees now also have to worry about sorting out spam? And the idiots who fall for scams about their banks asking them for the ID and password? What about stoping "unwated" spam? What about living in a world where people actually spend their time making something worthy of recognition? Where is dignity in these days of commertialism, the days of money and power?
Why not actually make a way that consumers actually look for the ads rather than throwing it to their faces like if they were stupid?
The Opt out for the X-10 spam on websites was a hell of a thing that annoyed many, frustrated others and provided the basis for many others to follow up on just that: making the internet a scary place where one may not know anymore what is good and wat is not, what is safe and waht not. I am saddened by the ongoing destruction of a vast resource such as the internet.
I guess that the problem is actually that there are one or two billion to many in this world. YES! that has to be it!! Start a war, control the amount of population, make them drink victory gin and the partie's coffee... After all all you need is a telescreen to spam just about everybody.... NO WAIT!!!! I've seen one in many people's living room already... A TV!!!!
We are doomed.
Man I had to much Coke, ohh, mmmm, need more Bawls... nahh...not really. Too much caffeine might not be good.
Have a good one.
===== "Every head is a different world so don't invade mine you FREAK!" smartSAGA said
redundant
It appears he doesn't even understand what the word "Socialist" means.
I'm sorry, the number you have dialed is an imaginary number. Please rotate your phone 90 degrees and dial again.
jeez dude, what's with all the burning?
I suppose that one way to look at it is that, if you know the ways that spam can be made then you may see new and better ways to stop it. Similar to virus writers and hackers who now work for companies finding weaknesses in their security.
Warning, comments may not have been passed by the sanity department of my brain.
One spent last summer at IBM and the summer previous in Microsoft (yes working on the OS itself).
I'll leave you to draw your own conclusions.
ps. John Aycock's courses are known to be *very*, um challenging (read:impossible but rewarding). I'd hire one of his students before I'd hire 90% of you.
Maybe I'm just a dirty Marxist(but not a communist/stalinist) but this just seems one more aspect of the commodification of our culture.
The primary factor for motivation in our society is competition. Learning theory and high level thought will probably allow a graduate to make significant contributions to society for the next twenty years, but the person learning the practice will make a much bigger impact this year, which will directly effect stock markets (a.k.a. competitive markets).
Capitalism is probably the premier force in moving a society from an agrarian culture to a post-industrial one. However, maybe it's time to stop worshiping it and reevaluate where it's taking us today?
is it worth the risk to the rest of us or even to the potential careers of the graduates of the course?
No. Some graduates will consider career in local police/FBI/CIA/NSA/HFD/RIAA interesting.
There you are, staring at me again.
So I should expect the University of Calgary
to be offering the following courses over
the next school year?
WMD 101, 102 (Chemistry & Physics Depts),
Terrorism 101, 102 (Pol. Science & Theology)
Organizing Terror Cells 101 (Sociology)
The first poster who "gets it" and its an AC to boot.
Ignorance is curable, stupid is forever.
First order of business: how to spell Nigeria.
For he today that sheds his blood with me shall be my brother.
A well crafted virus can be a remarkable technical challenge. Those of us who remember RTM's 'accident,' boot sector viruses (with code length measured in hundreds of bytes) will realise that this is a field of technology and skill. Although it may give me pause for thought, teaching a course in it is the only way to effectively combat the problem. (and perhaps making the course mandatory for programmers, so they can learn to code properly!)
Spam is different. Read the RFCs in an afternoon, find an open relay, and you can write a $#@(& shell script to spam half the planet. Want something more clever? It's still essentially trivial.
Spam exists because (a) the protocol allows it, and (b) society allows it. Teaching people to spam won't help solve the problem because it's not a technical problem to begin with--it's a social one.
"How to spam" shouldn't be a separate course. It should be three hours of lectures in a full semester mandatory course on ethics, morality, and law. The way to stop spam is to throw the criminals into jail, and quit pussyfooting around with second-rate specialty laws, or courses designed to teach what every third year student should already know.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
Send an email to the head of computer science at the U of C. Tell him what you think!
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
i see, they're providing an attraction so we can get a bunch of spammers in one place and kill em!
-admiral akbar- it's a trap!
Most college courses seem to be rooted in the theoretical. In theory most college students know how to build bridges or design multi billion dollar systems. In reality (practical app courses, internships) we can barely find our assess with two hands and a map. I can't imagine that it would be too much different anywhere you go.
I wear the ring.
Non-accredited? The University of Calgary is an public, accredited institution. It is funded by the Province of Alberta, as are all the other universities in Alberta.
AFAIK, in Canada, there isn't such a thing as a non-accredited university. That would be fraudulent!
It's true.
We are scientists! That means that we have to explore the causes of an event in order to produce solutions or alternatives. In a more concrete context, we need to know how a virus (including worms, Trojans, etc) infects, spreads, and protects itself from IDS or anti-virus programs. I am not going into details of what it is taught in the virus lecture, but I can tell you it is one of the best classes I've ever taken. How can we expect to write secure and safe programs if we ignore the threats? (eg. stack overflows) We now have software engineers writing code ladies and gents! Do you know what that means? --> More vulnerable programs, spagetti code since they have no idea about algorithms, efficiency, etc. We need people that detect all these problems before they are packed and released! Why wait until someone figures a vulnerability out and then wait for the AV companies to act? Knowing how to write a virus does not create criminals! Knowing how to write a virus creates better computer scientists; it teaches us how to attack a system AND also how to defend a system. It teaches us what not to do when developing software. In addition, it encourages us to build better anti-virus systems now that we know the techniques virus writers use. What's next? Say that Doctors should not study viruses because they could put us at risk? Say that we can't take encryption lectures because we can break some sensitive info. and put national security at risk? Get real people!
First, I went to school with John. He's a nice guy who has always had a keen interest in security... lots of interesting people went to U of C at that time... like Theo Deraadt... and they all seemed to have a keen interest in security.
... all it takes is one bad egg to use this knowledge maliciously, and regardless of whatever indemnity the U of C has with its students, the U of C will get SUED BIG TIME and so will John, including potential jail time with pending Canadian and US legislation.
But
The credo You need to be a thief to catch a thief! is too much bullshit because there is an ethical and moral disparity between the two. The motivations are completely different. And teaching a course and having them sign a contract will Not prevent someone unscrupulous from doing what they're motivated to do.
For the record, Academic Computer Services has always been very anal about such things as security, and I see this as yet another rift between campus IT and the computer science department... even with a camera and a disconnected net, there is NO way to prevent human error/intent that could cause something to get out.
There is nothing innovative about this as per one writer's comments. Its a really bad idea because of the potential liability, fallout, and repercussion.
/\/\icro/\/\uncher
they might as well offer "How to become a Online Porn King" while they are at it. IDIOTS!!
tells me that this is a good way of getting rid of the classmates you don't like. Similar to the zero-tolerence diversion or the old guilty-until-innocent mentality.