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Seem to forget the other half of the equation

Seems everyone wants to place all the blame on the individuals that wrote the malicious code. How about some to the blame going to the ones that made it possible?

If any of you are familiar with torts of negligence then you know what an attractive nuisance is. MS software is an attractive nuisance. So, consider the attractive nuisance doctrine which is a principle of law of negligence that a person who maintains an attractive nuisance on his property must exercise reasonable care to protect children against its dangers, or be held responsible for any injury that occurs, even though the injured child trespassed upon his property or was otherwise at fault.

Using MS software is equivalent to placing a ladder against you house in a neighborhood full of children. One of them is going to climb it. If the child is injured guess who is responsible for it? Hint: it's not the child. It's the one that created the attractive nuisance. Certainly the child should not have done it. At the same time, the homeowner should take the precautions a reasonable person would take to prevent it from happening. MS has failed to meet the reasonable care standard by distributing substandard software. By doing that, MS created the conditions favorable for these 'script kiddies'. MS should be held accountable for their failure to provide reasonably safe software.

Of course the MS pundits won't see it that way. They are the same people that want to lock children in jail for trespassing when one of them is injured because of the owners negligence.

Then, of course, there is always the argument that people that use MS software should be held partly accountable under the assumption of risk doctrine or because of contributory negligence. MS software has many exploits that are widely known. No reasonable person can, in good faith, claim he did not know, or could not have known, using MS software will put him at risk because the complete lack of reasonable security measures by MS are common knowledge.

In other words, if MS software weren't so easy to crack there wouldn't be so many script kiddies. Putting 13 year olds in prison for it seems to me to be the wrong approach. How about MS shoulder some of the burden for their garbage?

OTOH, someone that can write malicious code for *nix* is probably someone with above average knowledge of software security. Many burglars have gone into the home security field. It may be a good idea to listen to what they have to say.

Like it or not, honest people that always play by the rules simply will not think to look for ways to crack systems that crackers will, same as a homeowner will not think of all the ways someone can break-in to their home.

Posted by: AmusedAtItAll   Posted on: 09/23/04 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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