[oclug]Moral Problem

[Francis J. A. Pinteric]

On Wed, 13 Nov 2002 17:04:17 -0500
Brad Barnett <bb at L8R.net> wrote:

> Make your life easy.  Use the same method, but instead of attacking the
> machine in order to clear it up, have your modified slapper virus email
> the admin of that IP block.  A simple whois (I am unsure of Redhat, but
> Debian's whois has been modified to parse regional whois databases as
> well) will fix the problem.
>

That approach has an effectiveness approaching zero. On another mailing list, one contributor related a story about dealing with all the NIMDA attacks being logged into his Apache log files. He wrote a script examine the logs and would isolate those NIMDA attempts coming from other computers on his ISP's network and then mailing the IP addresses to the ISP to have them deal with it. Nothing happened. In the meantime, the virus continues to spead itself.

Which raises another moral issue. The moral law requires us to act when we see an injustice or wrong doing. We must do what we can, and failing to do as much makes us morally culpable. If we can do good without harming or endangering ourselves or others in the process we must act. If I followed your suggestion, knowing that practically nothing will result from it other than the virus continues to spread, knowing that I have an effective course of action available to me, I would be morally as guilty as those who perpetrated the wrongdoing in the first place. "For one who knows the right thing to do and does it not, it is a sin." (James 4:17)

In fact I would be guilty of two sins: failing to act effectively, and allowing the sin to continue.

>>>--fja->
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