[plug] Community Hacking...

[Christian]

On Tue, Aug 22, 2000 at 12:47:47PM +0800, Petter Reinholdtsen wrote:
> 
> [Ben Burns]
> > Ok, who sent .bash_history --> /dev/null??
> 
> [Kevin Shackleton]
> > that was _bound_ to happen wasn't it?!
> 
> [Ben Burns]
> > :=)  Yep - guess it was.
> 
> No it was not _bound_ to happend.  I feel sorry for the idiot who did
> it.  It was unnessesary and stupid, and did not prove anything but the
> existence of idiots in the world -- and that point is already well
> proven.

Thanks.

Someone sends an open account to a public mailing list basically opening
his machine to the world.  Not only that, if I understand the problem
correctly, it can't be fixed without root privileges either so the
account is just a hole really.  I log in, check there is no one else
logged in via the account (yet) and change the password.  I then log out
and email the owner of the machine, explaining what I did and why.  I
figure I was doing him a favour because it's entirely possible that
someone on this list (or someone who just happens to find the message
archived or ...) would log in and do much worse.  Either way, I offered
to reverse the situation and open the account back up if he really
wanted.  I stopped the bash logging more out of habit than anything.
It's just something I do when I get a new account.  The .bash_history
file is a disaster waiting to happen.  It didn't matter either way since
the account was now locked and, possibly, it would also alert the owner
of the machine as to why this whole thing wasn't a good idea.  Anyway,
overall, from my perspective I was doing the right thing but apparently
that makes me an idiot.

However, before I return the favour, perhaps you'd like to justify what
you just said.  Why was it not bound to happen?  Seems incredibly
obvious to me that it would. (Kevin seems to think so too).  Which make
believe world do you live in where bad things don't happen to people who
leave their doors wide open?  Sure sounds nice there.  I understand why
you feel sorry for myself and the other people who have to live in the
real world.