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A Little Love and Responsibility Goes a Long Way |
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Saturday, 30 August 2003 |
The FBI arrested a Jeffery Lee Parson today and charged him with releasing the MSBLASTER worm on the Internet. The article at c|net describes him as follows:
Neighbors interviewed by the Associated Press described Parson as a big kid who drove too fast, changed his hair color often and spent a lot of time on his computers. Neighbor Curtis Mackey said the allegations surprise him. "I didn't think he had the smarts for it myself," he told the news service. "The profile kind of fits. He kind of liked to be alone a lot."
This perpetuates the unfortunate stereotype of computer people as introverted deviants, but maybe there's a silver lining here. An escort service for nerds might go a long way toward making the Internet a safer place. If this guy ever had a date, he might have better things to do than get attention by releasing worms.
Then again, here's another (more practical and less fecitious) alterternative. I've wondered about the issue of software liability. If you want to build a bridge you have to be a certified engineer, the bridge must meet building codes, and if it collapses due to your negligence in designing or building it, you're liable. Should software be subject to similar regulation and liability?
I don't have the answer, but as someone who writes software, it makes me nervous. On the other hand, if software engineers were required to be trained in secure programming and code was required by regulation to be checked for buffer overflows the Internet (and many other systems) would be much safer.
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