Maybe OT: Network ethics - test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

2 Feb 2002

On February 2, Doc Shipley wrote:
...
    This is sort of a sanity check.  I'm putting the
question here because
 of the cumulative years of professional experience here, as well as an
 "international" perspective.

   How would you react to a guest in your (not normally open to the
 public) building plugging a computer into a random ethernet port and
 asking for a DHCP lease?  Is there any non-emergency consideration that
 would make that appropriate? 
  In a well-designed network, I wouldn't worry too much about it.  On
an unswitched network with unencrypted root passwords floating around,
though, I'd have...erm, "issues" with it.

  You bring up an interesting point, however.  A good (if somewhat
simplistic) goal for the security of a network might be to say if
you'd be nervous about someone doing this, then you still have things
left to fix. :)

     -Dave

-- 
Dave McGuire
St. Petersburg, FL         "Less talk.  More synthohol." --Lt. Worf