Tuesday, June 5, 2001

There's no such thing as software `piracy' I know it's not a new idea, but I think it needs to be reiterated that piracy (which apparently is still practiced in some parts of the world) is a crime of violence, often resulting in the death of its victims, whereas making unauthorized copies of software that is copyright or licensed, while illegal in most places, is not a crime of violence. It may be tilting at windmills, like trying to get people to use the term `crackers' instead of `hackers'. Perhaps the people who write stories about this stuff would be more careful with their terminology if people started referring to `taggers' (i.e., graffiti vandals) as `journalists'? After all, they both work with words.... [Fred Gilham via risks-digest Volume 21, Issue 46] 0:00 # G!

Steve Gibson: Windows XP Vulnerable; Big ISPs just don't care The report on this webpage http://grc.com/dos/grcdos.htm is from Steve Gibson, a respected name in the tech community, and it details his travails after grc.com came under attack from a 13-year-old hacker, at first due to a mistaken belief Gibson had called him a name, then simply because it was fun. It mentions how Windows XP was all but made with these so-called "script kiddies" in mind, and they're aware of it--and when it is more widely spread, they will be able to launch devastating, perhaps unstoppable attacks. He also mentions how much trouble he had getting any of the major ISPs to cooperate with him. This is an eye-opening report. Ignore it at your peril. Chris Meadows aka Robotech_Master Co-moderator rec.toys.transformers.moderated robotech@eyrie.org [Chris Meadows via risks-digest Volume 21, Issue 45] 0:00 # G!