From: fihsu@athena.mit.edu (Hsu I-wei)
Subject: Re: Tiny logs ...
Keywords: tinylogs, twinks, flame, penn, idiocy
Organization: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Date: Wed, 14 Oct 1992 17:19:46 GMT

In article <A700E2224F015032@ghostwheel.dartmouth.edu> takkyon@dartmouth.edu (Dr. Tachyon) writes:
>I'm really grateful to this person for posting.  Partly so I can correct
>some misconceptions of his, but mostly because I'm so incoherently
>furious that I doubt if I could write a decent flame without something to
>play off.
>
>To continue:
>
>In article [cut] Martin Dougiamas, martin@cs.curtin.edu.au writes:
>>I, for one, find these recently-posted logs quite fascinating.
>
>"Fascinating" is not the word.  

*shrug* I skimmed through a couple.. they did seem rather redundant. The
Islandia post was pretty cool tho.

>from replying to your post for a moment, Martin, and address the original
>poster of the logs:
>
>What in the seven flaming scarlet hells did you think you were doing, you
>idiot?  Was your intention to get half, or more of the MU* community, not
>to mention virtually anyone else who finds out about your stupidity,
>absolutely f*cking furious with you?  If so, congratulations -- you've

I think the original poster wanted to create a bit of an uproar. :)

>succeeded beyond your wildest dreams.  More likely, you felt you'd
>received some offense from some of the persons in the logs, and thought
>that hacking into someone's account and posting things from it to the net
>would be a really cool way to get revenge.  Or, possibly, you're just a
>typical childish hacker who thought that causing enormous emotional pain
>to the people depicted in the logs might bring you a few fleeting moments
>of amusement.  Either way, grow up, although given the current attitudes

Hmm.. those possibilities sound reasonable to me. But guessing motive is
one of the hardest things to do eh?

>of some people I've talked to, whether you'll have a chance to is highly
>debatable.  (And yes, we *will* identify you.  Real soon, I'll bet.)

Oh, is that right?

>I don't know why I'm bothering to address you; no doubt you will not
>deign to respond; generally, people cowardly enough to post private logs
>from guest accounts aren't too good about revealing who they are. 

Yes, which is why I wouldn't bet on finding out who the poster is.

>As Lydia says, the logs were posted from a guest account at upenn.  This
>is a revoltingly bad security problem.  IMNSHO someone should *not* be

Yes, but not just the guest account. Don't forget that said person
probably had to break into the logger's account? Perhaps the logger didn't
choose a secure password either?

>able to do this.  Period.  There is little or no excuse for allowing it
>to happen.  Perhaps the upenn sysadmins ought to spend less time worrying
>about whether cs students exceed their cpu time limits, and more time
>fixing the security holes in their system.

Excuse me, but I feel it's pretty well known what a "good" password is?
Security has more to do with the users than the admin. If all the users
pick obvious passwords, security is going to be rather hard isn't it.
Perhaps the sysadmin was a bit lackadasical in making users aware that
their account can be cracked if they choose an easy password???

>>There ought to be a lot more posting of this sort of thing to
>>rec.games.mud.tiny.

Heh, you must be new to r.g.m. Log postings happen all the time.

>No, posting this sort of thing to r.g.m.t is a good way to get one's head
>stuck up on a pole somewhere.  We don't need more of it, we need to

Head stuck up on a pole? How so? What are you insinuating would happen to
said poster if he/she were to confess?

>discourage it.  Strongly.

Yeah right.. this is r.g.m. where you can find about as much consideration
in posting as you find on alt.flame.

>>Phew, there sure are some far out people around.
>
>Yeah, there sure are.  I'd guess that someone who gets his kicks posting
>logs dealing with people's private RL and VR lives to the world probably
>is pretty f*cking far out.

Yeah, why the poster would go through all that trouble to post some logs
is beyond me.

>>Martin
>
>		-- dt
>				Ye Royal Lord High Twink-Squisher Extraordinaire, Amby's Army
>
>--
>email: takkyon@dartmouth.edu / takkyon@winesap.dartmouth.edu
>"The best thing about Crays is, you can sleep on them."
>					-- Tracey Baker
>Coming Soon: WildCardsMUSH.  With the Authenic Original Chrysalis.

Francis

Newsgroups: rec.games.mud.tiny