[Novalug] Boston College Campus Police: "Using Prompt Commands" May Be a Sign of Criminal Activity

[William Sutton]

We all remember how that worked out for Randall Schwartz....

William Sutton

On Thu, 16 Apr 2009, jecottrell3 at comcast.net wrote:

> Arrested? A simple, "Hi, I work here, let's go find my boss or HR" should do, as would showing them your badge if you had one.
>
> JIM
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "The Doctor" <drwho at virtadpt.net>
> To: "novalug mailing list" <novalug at calypso.tux.org>
> Sent: Thursday, April 16, 2009 10:56:32 AM GMT -05:00 US/Canada Eastern
> Subject: Re: [Novalug] Boston College Campus Police: "Using Prompt Commands" May Be a Sign of Criminal Activity
>
> Gregory Maxwell wrote:
>
>> One day he came home and his parents pulled him aside— "Jason, we need
>> to have a talk. We need know you've been engaging in criminal
>> activities with your computers", certainly not something any BBS
>> operator wanted to hear especially in the early 90s.  Much
>> uncomfortable and confused discussion ensued until it was discovered
>> that the cause for their concern was a Windows system that died during
>> the day, leaving a "You have performed an illegal operation" message
>> on the screen.
>
> A number of years ago, I worked for a software company in Pittsburgh
> that was an early adopter of 802.11b networking.  Most of the software
> developers used laptops rather than desktops because they preferred to
> wander around the office for a change of scenery whenever the mood
> struck them, so it made a certain amount of sense (especially due to the
> cost at the time of running cable into every cube in the gulag and the
> kitchen).  Before we put the wireless network into production we had to
> determine the best place to put the AP to get optimal coverage (as well
> as determine how far outside the building perimeter the signal would
> reach).  So I popped a wireless card into my laptop, started a
> continuous ping of the AP's management interface, and went for a stroll.
> Every time the stream of pings stopped, I made a note of the physical
> location, took a few steps closer to the building, and started again.
>
> Local law enforcement was understandably curious about a slightly funny
> looking gentleman walking around an office bloc and waving a laptop
> computer to and fro.  It was probably only my boss looking out of his
> window at exactly the right moment which kept me from being arrested
> because the police apparently had never seen Linux before and didn't
> know "64 bytes from ap (10.10.10.1): icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=0.433 ms"
> did not, in fact, mean "H4x0r1ng 7h3 m47r1x."
>
> What tipped them off, they said, was the lack of icons or start menu on
> my laptop because "Only hacker tools don't use GUIs."
>
> -- 
>
> The Doctor [412/724/301/703]
>
> PGP: 0x807B17C1 / 7960 1CDC 85C9 0B63 8D9F  DD89 3BD8 FF2B 807B 17C1
> WWW: http://drwho.virtadpt.net/
>
> "Right on time, right on schedule." --Terrence McKenna
>
>
>
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