🚀 go-pugleaf

If you log into minyos.xx.rmit.oz.au via any of the ccannexes from
VICNET, esp. via the modems, you should be aware that a certain member
of the computer centre staff has a nasty habit of logging individual
sessions.

If you value the integrity of your logins to minyos.xx.rmit.oz.au
(perhaps any other RMIT computer you access via ccannex) then I
would suggest *NOT* using the annexes. CDCNET maybe a better option
but they probably have some way of logging sessions from there too.

How do I know this happened ? The staff member in question both
admitted to doing it and showed me his saved log of a session
whilst I was on minyos. Apparently this isn't the first time this
has happened. After talking to another member of staff there, it
seems they will justify any such activity if they suspect their
suspicions turn out to be wrong ? Do we have to live in constant
fear of the staff there logging our sessions ? This seems quite
unreasonable to me. Should they be allowed to log our sessions for
'suspected' breach of rules ? Is our privacy allowed to be invaded
in this manner ?

Is any information they may glean from such dubious activities
admissible as evidence in some disciplinary hearing, or has it been
obtained illegally? Are the Computer Centre staff allowed to keep
their own copies of the logs for their own purposes?

I was unable to get a comment on whether these activities would be
supported even if the staff were committing criminal activities.
There was no indication that these activities would stop but would
continue as long as they suspect improper use.

After talking with fellow students, it appears that this 'logging'
isnt the only breach of ethics that has occurred. Various students
have also had telnet sessions to other hosts 'interfered' with by
some administrator who has entered commands such as

grep `whoami` /etc/passwd

These commands have been entered 'for' the student (inserted
into the input stream by the admin).

Doesn't this constitute some sort of forgery or breach
of security, esp. since the interfering administrator did not
have an account of any sort on the remote machine in question.
This makes one wonder about the security of accounts on remote
machines if they are going to do things like this.

What of yallara.cs.rmit.oz.au ? Well, let's hope the system
administrators in the computer science department have a better
code of ethics.  However, after the episode last year when it was
discovered a certain member of staff had the right priveledges to 
read all mail on yallara, it sort of makes you wonder...

No names have been mentioned to protect the indiviual(s) responsible.

Cheers,
Darren

p.s. Cancelling this news article will not improve things -
     censorship is just as unethical and all students deserve
     to know the risks they run when using the Computer Centre
     equipment.