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  • From: Michael S Czeiszperger <czei AT webperformanceinc.com>
  • To: "InterNetWorkers" <internetworkers AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
  • Subject: Re: College sysadmin fired for distributed computing
  • Date: Thu, 2 Aug 2001 10:04:56 -0400


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On Thursday 02 August 2001 08:26 am, you wrote:
> One wonders what's going on there. It seems a leap beyond the usual FUD
> factor.
>

My first job out of college was as a UNIX sysadmin for Ohio State, and
there's nothing more political than a university. In my experience most of
the computers are purchased through grant money, and each lab is controlled
by a separate professor with his or her own political machine. If you get on
the bad side of one of the powerful professors, the computer admin management
certainly isn't going to back you up.

Once I was accused of causing a long running program that was part of a
research program to crash. It took a couple of meetings to straighten that
mess out. If the distributed.net program was at all even suspected of
interfering with research or classroom activities that could explain the
problem.

The big question, though, is I can understand the unlucky guy getting fired,
but to have the university pursue the matter and press for a criminal
prosecution is wierd.

One of my duties as sysadmin was security, and I normally ran the standard
password crackers against our password database to identify any security
holes caused by students or professors picking easily guessed passwords.
Given the lack of familiarity of computer management by the
administration, I was in fear of being fired for "computer hacking" on the
very machines I as administrating.

- --
Michael S Czeiszperger
czei AT webperformanceinc.com

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