🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <44147@netnews.upenn.edu> chip@pender.ee.upenn.edu (Charles H. Buchholtz) writes:
>In article aej@manyjars.WPI.EDU (Allan E Johannesen) writes:
>>>>>>> On 4 Jun 91 00:40:16 GMT, kadie@eff.org (Carl Kadie) said:
>>
>>kadie> A student at Ohio State student tells me that users there are
>>kadie> also locked out (denied access to their computer account) when
>>kadie> they are wanted for a meeting. The difference is they are given
>>kadie> no notice before the lock out.
>>
>>Golly.  There could be _no_ genuine reason for this, could there?
>
>We do this when we have reason to believe that someone has broken into
>an account and is using it without the owner's permission.  We change
>the shell on the account so that it simply displays a message asking
>the person to come to our office.
[stuff about talking to account owner deleted]
>We couldn't think of any other reasonable response to take when we
>have good reason to believe that an account has been cracked.
>Certainly, leaving it open and sending mail is not appropriate under
>those circumstances.

On the system I administrate (which, incidentally, is a student-run Unix
workstation cluster I'd be happy to talk about if folks are interested),
sometimes we'll give the user a phone call and ask them if they know what's
going on.  We have people put their home phone numbers on the account
application form so we can get in touch of them if there are any problems
with creating their account.

Remember, the phone system is still the biggest network in the world.  :)

David G. Paschich    Open Computing Facility    UC Berkeley
dpassage@ocf.berkeley.edu    
"Everybody wants prosthetic foreheads on their real heads."
					--They Might Be Giants