🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Dec14.164652.13388@cc.ic.ac.uk> cmaae47@imperial.ac.uk writes:
>But maybe you display the notice BEFORE people log in, as we do here, viz:
>
>====================================================
>IRIX System V.3 (cscmgb)
>
>Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine
>
>          Centre for Computing Services
>
>    This computer system is operated on behalf of
>                 Imperial College
>
>Only authorised users are entitled to connect and/or 
>log in to this computing system. If you are not sure 
>  whether you are authorized, then you are not and 
>          should DISCONNECT IMMEDIATELY.
>
>====================================================
>
>It also comes out for ftp connects, and is meant to rob hackers of the
>excuse that they saw a "welcome to the xxxx system" and therefore assumed 
>they were authorised to use it.

We thought about this idea, then rejected it.  I favoured such a
banner, but our management glommed it on grounds that we've got a lot
of networked machines that cannot be made to display such messages, and
a lot of contexts (e.g. NFS exports) where you can't inject such a
message.  Their fear was that if, say 50% of machines/contexts put out
such a message, that might (in legal terms) allow crackers to 'assume'
that the unposted machines were explicitly fair game -- after all, if
they weren't fair game, they'd have put out a warning as well.  Anyone
know what the actual legal position is here?  (UK legal position most
useful, but others would be interesting.)

-- 
Paul Smee, Computing Service, University of Bristol, Bristol BS8 1UD, UK
 P.Smee@bristol.ac.uk - ..!uunet!uknet!bsmail!p.smee - Tel +44 272 303132