From: kadie@herodotus.cs.uiuc.edu (Carl M. Kadie)
Subject: WLU sys admins search out "nasty" filenames and passwords
Organization: University of Illinois, Dept. of Comp. Sci., Urbana, IL
Date: Thu, 13 Aug 1992 18:21:57 GMT

[This article, by Jim Boyce, jboyce1@mamut.wlu.ca, appeared on July
14th in the Wilfrid Laurier University's student newspaper, the Cord.
It is posted with Jim Boyce's permission.]

     Questions have been raised about a program used by Computing
Services to find profane file names. In May, The Cord obtained
computer printouts from Kathy O'Grady, a student, which showed
that the program was running as recently as last October and was
designed to search through accounts in a section of the computer
system and find files with the words "cunt", "shit" and "fuck" in
their names.
     O'Grady said she had been sceptical of rumours about the
program's existence until last summer when she saw it operating
(it could be viewed by typing a computer command which causes all
running programs to be listed on the screen). She said she
continued to check the system regularly during the summer and the
fall and found it several more times. Copies of the program were
saved on computer and printed out by her and two other Laurier
students as proof.
     Carl Langford, the Systems Administrator, said the program
was started up two or three years ago and discontinued after a
few weeks. The program discovered last year by O'Grady and other
students was left running by mistake, he said, and had evaded
detection because it ran sporadically and late at night. "As I
recall, it was set to fire up at some ungodly hour of the
morning," he said, but added that no action was taken with the
results.
     Hart Bezner, Director of Computing Services, said the
program operated routinely during the mid-eighties, "but it [the
language] cleaned up so we quit looking." He also said that it
may have been running as recently as the past year: "there was
one occasion when we had a complaint and that must have been
within the last six months, maybe eight months, and I think we
ran it two or three nights on all six unix machines to see how
big the problem was."
     Bezner, however, was not explicit as to what was done with
the results from the program. A former Laurier student has told
the Cord that the password to his account was changed last
October, a few days before he had an assignment due. His password
included the word "fuck" [in reference to a Kurt Vonnegut novel]
and he said that when he contacted Computing Service, he was told
he would have to get a new one: "They said that the computer went
through and deleted nasty words".
     Bezner would neither confirm or deny that such incidents had
happened saying that no account had ever been cancelled but it
was, "quite possible that we changed a password".
     Langford and Bezner gave two reasons for intially creating
the program.
     First, according to Bezner, there had been many complaints
about profane file names during the mid-eighties. Some of these
complaints came from within Computing Services: "When the
operators do file saves, the names of files roll past and they
appear on a printout or a screen or both... and what triggered it
was a file called `curly cunt hairs'."
     Others came from computer users. Bezner said that during
these years output from the laser printer carried file names in
"inch-high letters" on the front page: "people flipping through
their output would come across these words and it just wasn't
very nice."
     He said that only the names of files were checked and never
the contents.
     Secondly, according to Langford and Bezner, two students
complained to Computer Services after seeing profane file names
on terminals that other students were using. The program was then
run to discover the degree to which profanity was being used.
     When asked whether those students should have been looking
at the terminals Bezner said, "it happens quite accidentally"
when they are passing by. He explained that the computer room was
a public place and equated the incident with someone going into
an elevator and seeing a swear word written on the wall.
     Kathy O'Grady, who has been the using the computers daily
for more than two years, disagreed with such a comparison:
"[Graffiti] forces the public to look at it, that's the whole
point of graffiti, it makes people look at it.... When I'm typing
in the main computer room I don't expect somebody to come up and
look at what I'm writing."
     Furthermore, it does not explain why a password should be
cancelled since it is known only to the user and cannot be seen
by anyone else.
     O'Grady said she talked to a professor several times during
the fall and winter about the program but decided to pursue the
matter further and contacted Bezner. She said she wrote to him
via computer mail and asked for an interview because she was
thinking of writing an article for The Cord. Bezner responded
with the following message: "If such a program still runs, it is
a hangover from the distant past when such words were less
acceptable. The program certainly doesn't appear to take any
action. Will look into it. HB." (February 10, 1992).
     O'Grady said that she has not seen the program running since
that time but has concerns that it might be "masked" or kept
dormant until she has left the university. She continues to check
for it regularly and maintains her opposition to such actions by
Computing Services: "it is totally ridiculous for any individual
or small group of individuals to determine the language that
students, or even professors, use."



--
Carl Kadie -- kadie@cs.uiuc.edu -- University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Newsgroups: alt.comp.acad-freedom.talk