More Swiki damage by socp-b.scsnet.com

Kevin Fisher kgf at golden.net
Thu Jul 25 01:31:06 UTC 2002


On Wed, Jul 24, 2002 at 04:40:03PM -0700, Michael Rueger wrote:
> 
> 
> Kevin Fisher wrote:
> > [putting on dusty sysadmin hat]
> > 
> > Once the kiddies and bozos discover something that's wide open, word tends
> > to spread.  Nothing attracts flies like an open server..script kiddies
> > and their ilk just LOVE finding 'drop zones' for their warez.
> 
> I couldn't agree more.
> 
> > [takes off hat, throws it back in the corner]
> 
> Don't, it's sysadmin appreciation day this Friday ;-)

Really?!  Where did I put that hat...do recovering sysadmins qualify? :)
(Nowadays I wear a much less lead-lined hat, far from the Wonderland of
the machine room...)

> 
> Yet another approach would be to set a password, post it to dev list
> once to get started and put a note somewhere on the swiki like "if you
> would like to contribute to the swiki contact <some poor admin>". This
> could actually be a read only mailing list with a moderated
> subscription. The only purpose of this list would be to send out
> password changes. Vandals can be removed at any time if need be.
> The main contributors should be up and running almost immediately and is
> assures a certain network of trust.
> 
> Michael


Even a small password protection scheme would likely discourage armchair
twits like Snorkman.  People like that are usually kids that get bored
quickly if they don't get "instant results" (something Swikis are really
good at providing, by design!).

An in-depth hacking of the swiki would be an interesting learning experience..
it would force the guy to learn Smalltalk, at the very least. :)  I doubt
they'd be able to do buffer overflows or anything fancy without first 
understanding the Squeak VM.


> "All of life's big problems include the words 'indictment' or
> 'inoperable'. Everything else is small stuff." -- Alton Brown
> +------------------------------------------------------------+
> | Michael Rueger    m.rueger at acm.org      ++1 (310) 937 7196 |
> +------------------------------------------------------------+
> 



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