Student suspended for bypassing network security - News
Topic: Technology
12:41 pm EDT, Apr 30, 2007
The University of Portland handed a one-year suspension to engineering major and Air Force ROTC member Michael Maass after he wrote a computer program designed to replace and improve Cisco Clean Access (CCA).
Maass noticed flaws in CCA that would allow it to be bypassed in "antivirus and operating system check." Essentially, a program could be written that fooled CCA into thinking it was receiving correct information identifying a computer's operating system and antivirus as current and up to date.
According to Information Services Director Bryon Fessler, a fundamental purpose of CCA is that it "evaluates whether computers are compliant with security policies (i.e., specific antivirus software, operating system updates, patches, etc.)."
In the design of his computer program, Maass looked at the functions CCA provides and identified vulnerabilities where it could be bypassed. He wrote a program that emulated the same functions as CCA and eliminated some security issues.
He says that the method he chose is "one of six that I came up with."
Maass says his intent was not malicious. Rather, the sophomore says he was examining vulnerabilities so that they could be fixed.
"I was planning on going to Cisco with the vulnerability this summer," Maass says.
[ On it's face, this is definitely the university's response, for better or for worse... it doesn't look like Cisco had any hand in it. Plus, handing his software around might not have been the best idea in the world.
Nonetheless, Cisco shares some responsibility, together with a lot of other companies, for setting the tone that security research is dangerous and that doing it outside of their strict and private rules should be met with sanctions. I think the whole idea that security problems can be responded to by silencing their discovery is the fault of a lot of people and it's a damn shame.
The Two Malcontents » U.S. Border Patrol Bars Canadian Psychotherapist Andrew Feldmar
Topic: Civil Liberties
3:06 pm EDT, Apr 27, 2007
Meanwhile, the U.S. Government is using the "ideological exclusion provision" of the Patriot act to bar perfectly peaceful people from the United States because they may express points of view that the administration dislikes. These are the actions of a totalitarian state.
"These are the actions of a totalitarian state."
Can't be emphasized emphatically enough.
The U.S. we thought we knew is already gone. The terrorist's brutal and horrifying tactics have done precisely what they were designed to do : Created a culture of fear, mistrust and oppression, bankrupted the treasury, shattered world opinion, mired us in war and destroyed the moral compass set forth in the Constitution.
No one seems to want to take up that call because of the political repercussions, but the bottom line is that it WORKED. That's the scariest, saddest, most depressing thing I can think of. For all the fine words and heartfelt sympathy for the victims of 9/11, the plot was allowed to succeed. Not the plot to kill people in the buildings, the preventability of which could be argued over for an eternity, but the plot to shake the Nation's very foundations loose from their moorings. We're adrift in a very fundamental way, and it's heartbreaking.
After only two episodes, Fox -- the network which ironically continues to fund Are You Smarter than a 5th Grader? -- has canceled Drive.
After watching the first two episodes, I can't say that I was blown away -- but then again, it was only two episodes into the fucking series.
You'd think Tim Minear and Nathan Fillion would've learned from their previous experience with Fox, as they were the co-creator and star (respectively) of my beloved Firefly -- another show that was vanquished quickly due to the moronic shortsightedness of the suits at NewsCorp programming.
So once again, all that hype, all that touting of Drive as the next great television drama, all that money spent on advertising -- only to be unceremoniously dumped like the unpopular girl in a John Hughes movie.
Fuck you Fox -- just fuck you.
Hear fucking hear. Fox is the worst of the lot. If something isn't wildly successful in the first INSTANT, they kill it.
I'll never forgive them for what they did to Firefly and I'm might disappointed to find that they've learned nothing from the experience.
(which isn't to say that Drive is even 5% as good as FireFly, but at least it had fast cars, and was thus still better than most of the reality and game show drivel available right now.)
High school senior Allen Lee sat down with his creative writing class on Monday and penned an essay that so disturbed his teacher, school administrators and police that he was charged with disorderly conduct.
"I understand what happened recently at Virginia Tech," said the teen's father, Albert Lee, referring to last week's massacre of 32 students by gunman Seung-Hui Cho. "I understand the situation."
But he added: "I don't see how somebody can get charged by writing in their homework. The teacher asked them to express themselves, and he followed instructions."
Allen Lee, an 18-year-old straight-A student at Cary-Grove High School, was arrested Tuesday near his home and charged with disorderly conduct for an essay police described as violently disturbing but not directed toward any specific person or location." ---------------------------------------------------------------------- I f'ing knew this was going to happen. :(
[ Yeah, it's basically inevitable. Be a good little sheep and don't think any bad thoughts or we'll ruin your life.
Let's call this what it is, they basically arrested the kid for Thought Crime.
Beyond which, they've sent the message that if you have strong emotions or violent thoughts, you better not express them, because you'll get arrested for it. They've sent the message that it's better to bottle those feelings up, keep them to yourself. They've sent the message that thinking that way makes you an alien and an outsider which is precisely 180 degrees from the message that ought to be sent.
Shit like this is about sweeping everything unpleasant under the rug without any acknowledgement that such tactics only make problems worse in the long run.
And don't even get me started on the absurdity of the disorderly conduct charge. If the teacher, or even her bosses, had handled this privately, and appropriately -- e.g. by engaging the boy's parents -- there would have been ZERO disruption for anyone. It was the cheap way out and it's a damn shame.
God knows it's hard to be a teacher these days, but this knee-jerk, zero tolerance crap is a bad way to run things. If shit was this bad when I was in school, I'd've gotten hauled in for the nine inch nails lyrics i had taped inside my locker door. -k]
Tonight, though, I am compelled to make an exception by ISB reader Ralph Burns, who emailed me something that I consider to be the single greatest piece of art ever produced by the hands of men.
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you...
BATMAN: DEFENDERS OF THE NIGHT
Possibly the worst thing i've ever watched. *Almost* crosses into "so bad it's good" territory.
A few years ago, an obesity researcher at the University of Washington named Adam Drewnowski ventured into the supermarket to solve a mystery. He wanted to figure out why it is that the most reliable predictor of obesity in America today is a person’s wealth. For most of history, after all, the poor have typically suffered from a shortage of calories, not a surfeit. So how is it that today the people with the least amount of money to spend on food are the ones most likely to be overweight?
Really quite a fascinating article on the dangers of ignoring agricultural policy in the US.
