Getting rooted sucks. But ultimately the full responsiblity rests with the person doing the actual attack. On Wednesday 22 October 2003 10:13 am, Florin Iucha wrote: > On Wed, Oct 22, 2003 at 07:57:22AM -0500, Sam MacDonald wrote: > > The problem IS the rootkit, it enables a crime to be committed. Rootkit > > has NO legitimate reason to exist, it exists to cause damage to a > > I bet $10 that a chicken has the same opinion about your knife. Almost any tool can be used for evil intent. Once knives are banned by the chickens they'd have to ban axes. But even then the farmer can just catch the chicken and snap its neck. Banning tools does nothing to actually prevent a person from carrying out intent. It could also be argued (big strech here, but hang with me) that knives and root kits are more efficient for both parties. In the root kit case, because script kiddies don't roll their own they use a "standard" root kit. That makes detection easier for the white hats. And it gives the white hats a better target for defense as well. In other words, even though the barrier to entry is lowered so is barrier to defense. We can complain endlessly (and I do, just ask my RL friends) about how many people like to "grief". I'd dare say that almost everyone on this list at least teased their little sister to hard a few times, or burned a spider with a magnifing glass, or whatever. Its human nature. People can disagree on the "whys", but this isn't the proper place that discussion. However, as with any other problem we need to deal with root causes of the problem. Want people to stop using root kits? Get involved with youth who are interested in computers, get them interested in white hat activities and (gasp!) white hat morals so they come to understand that it is "uncool" to root people. If you happen to bump into your local script kiddie, even better! Give them a project or an old programming book. Showing interest, even if you don't have much time to give, is usually enough to get this kids on the right track. I've been doing this for long enough that script kiddies weren't a problem when I started, but young enough to know a few personally. Most of these kids are just bored. I'm sure this "one person at time" strategy sounds nieve, but it has helped myself and a friend several times already. His network (school district in a western state with three junior and high schools) stays pretty quiet, and I'm convinced its because as an IT group they seek out and get to know their geeks. Oh well, thats enough stumping for one day :-) -- Ben Maas - Technology Architect Open Technology Systems, LLC ----------------------------------------------------------- eMail: bmaas at open-techsys.com Web: http://www.open-techsys.com Phone: 952.448.3121 Fax: 952.448.4944 Cell: 612.743.3674 _______________________________________________ TCLUG Mailing List - Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota http://www.mn-linux.org tclug-list at mn-linux.org https://mailman.real-time.com/mailman/listinfo/tclug-list