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Thursday, November 17, 1988 / University Daily Kansan
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Computer virus teaches a lesson in responsibilty
The tale of a computer virus that beleaguered more than 6,000 computers across the country recently took a strange and ironic twist last week when federal agents discovered that the source, a 23-year-old Cornell University student, happened to be the son of one of the government's top experts on computer security.
In 1983, Robert Morris Sr. testified at a Capitol Hill hearing that the nation's most important computer systems were safe from the then-new phenomenon called computer viruses.
The story of computer wizard Robert Morris Jr. and his 56-year-old father provides an interesting paradox.
Five years later, Morris' son gained access to computers that were connected to Arpanet, a department of Defense computer research network. According to the New York Times, Morris originally planned to spread a tiny program widely throughout the United States and have it secretly take up residence in the memory of each computer it entered. The program was supposed to propagate slowly from machine to machine, always hiding in the background to escape data.
But even Morris' legal difficulties have not kept him from becoming a folk hero for some computer programmers. At the age of 23, he reminded everyone, including his father, of the vulnerability of modern computer systems. Lest we forget, there is a machine behind the flashing cursor. And machines, no matter how well they are designed, can have flaws. They aren't infallible.
As a result, Morris is now the subject of an inquiry by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and U.S. attorneys from two states who are considering filing charges against him.
machine, always in the background. But a single incorrect number, which affected reproduction of the program, was incorrectly entered. It caused the program to spread madly out of control.
But this folk-hero status is dangerous, too. It illustrates the damage a single person with a single incorrect digit in his program can do to the nation's computer networks.
Although Morris had the access to computer knowledge that most computer students never could attain, his education and training is comparable to that of many KU computer science majors. Given the right circumstances, a KU student could create a similarly destructive virus. That ability is dangerous. Such intellectual energy must be funneled in constructive, not destructive, ways.
The Morris case should serve as an example to KU students that no matter how innocent their intentions may be, planting a virus into any computer system can have catastrophic consequences. Students have to realize how much responsibility they have and not abuse it.
Michael Horak for the editorial board
Other Voices
Who's responsible for KU athletics?
University of Kansas Chancellor Gene A. Budig is absolutely right. The Board of Regents ought not to regulate school athletics. In the aftermath of the National Collegiate Athletic Association severe penalization of Kappa Delta and other intrafactions, the role of the board in such matters.
Budig has said that the responsibility for watchdogging athletic programs ought to rest with the chancellor, not the board.
There already are too many fingers in such college pies. Besides the oversight of the NCAA, alumni, parents and fanatical supporters all wish to play a role in game plans and decisions left to coaches. On the field, the coach ought to rule. Off the field, the chancellor ought to rule over the athletic director who should rule over the coach. Under NCAA regulations, that should be enough regulating.
College sports programs and presidents get about the same amount of press. Too much. Considering the howling fans, angry parents and influential alums, sports programs do not go unnoticed.
KU's Larry Brown, a fair-haired boy if there ever was one, may have been the sort of coach whose popularity and incredible skills helped him to avoid the oversight of an inquisitive athletic director or chancellor. But let's face it, most university administrators would give away the ranch in order to acquire a coach of Larry Brown's stature. And in the process they give up a certain amount of objectivity as well.
But whatever happened on Larry Brown's watch did not appear as egregious as the penalties rendered. Nevertheless, the infractions take place and deserve to be punished.
place and deserve to place also the chancellor's business to change things within his camp, if changes are warranted, which, in this instance, does not appear to be the case.
The Hutchinson News Hutchinson
News staff
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George Bush's version of the Right to Choose.
When I transferred to KU this semester, the biggest shock wasn't the thousands of new faces in the enrollment line. Nor was it the terror of finding my classes or paying my own rent. Instead, the biggest shock to me was tolerating the wild pack of dogs that freely roam the campus.
No solution in sight for a ruff problem
Everywhere you look, there is a dog. We're up to our armets in canines. Everytime I go to class, I see at least a dozen dogs running wild, loitering in front of buildings, chewing on each others' ears and congesting a University that was intended to educate humans.
I know Kansas is the state where the deer and the antelope play, but our state song better add "wild canes" to its lyrics to tell the whole story.
1 note to use cliches, but there are more dogs here than you can shake a stick at. The dogs here are thicker than bugs on a bumper. There are more dogs here than Hare Krishnas at a metro airport terminal.
These packs of dogs are taking over the campus. I'm just waiting for the day when the Kansan prints a front-page story reading, "After watching several reruns of 'Planet of the Apos,' a pack of wild dogs overthrew the University Senate last night and proclaimed canine supremacy."
Or how about this promotional brochure sent to potential KU students: "Welcome to the University of Kansas, home of the national champion Jayhawks, home of Midwestern academic excellence and home of a plethora of pleniful pooches."
Staff columnist
Matt Taylor
There are big dogs. Small dogs. Mostly ugly dogs. They're available in all shapes, colors and smells.
Heck, I thought I knew what big dogs looked like until I got here. If bus fares should rise, you could saddle up a mutt and ride it to class. High-O, Rover, away.
Rover, a dog I've recently learned more about reproduction from shamefully watching dogs in heat than I did in a whole year of high school biology.
What the heck are these creatures doing on the Hill anyway? Don't they have anything better to do? Oh, to have the life of a dog. I can just imagine a conversation like this:
Collie A: "Well, buddy, what are you going to do today?"
today:
Collie B: "Oh, probably hang around Wescoe
and slobber. Then I may see how fast I can run across the campus and bark at garbage trucks. I guess I'll generally bother students and maintain my status as a nusance. How about you?
When my fiancée and I tried to watch a Jayhawk football game a few weeks ago under the Campanile, we saw more fighting between the loose dogs than we saw on the playing field. In fact, there were more dogs on the Hill than students in the stadium. Down below, I could have sworn I heard the chant, "Rock-Chalk-Dog-Bark-K-UUUU" rising from the crowd.
Collie A; "Probably the same."
But although the dogs seem to have plenty of fun, some of us would like to walk to class without dodging dog spit or worse. Some of us would like to sit at Wesco Beach without an occasional lick on the neck. Some of us would enjoy attending school without stray mutts.
But with a surplus of pooches, those dreams will probably remain as unattainable as a KU trip to the Orange Bowl.
Dogs may be man's best friend, but to some students, they're our worst enemy.
■ Matt Taylor is a Caney junior majoring in journalism.
K·A·N·S·A·N
MAILBOX
There will be an anti-Nazi/Klan rally at 11:30 a.m. tomorrow in front of Staffer-Flint Hall on the grassy area east of Wescoe Hall. Many different student organizations have given their support for the event. We urge individual students to get involved.
Anti-Klan rally
Ku Klux Klan activity is increasing in the Kansas/Missouri area. This activity is frightening. Klan organizers who spoke at the University last semester and other Klansmen who spoke on the Morton Downey Jr. show said they were organizing a KKK chapter in Lawrence.
At Northwest Missouri State University, the KKK has become so powerful that the administration has denounced the Klan's activity. They have said they want the KKK off the university campus. Klan organizers have refused this request. Black students actually have received notes slipped under their doors that read "NIGER LEAVE." Stand up against this activity before it infiltrates our campus and community!
Dan May
Join us in making a strong, united statement against racism and Nazi/Klan violence and for the universal respect of human rights. Let these evil groups stop abusing children and use their national right to speak out against their racist, exclusive and genocidal views. We hope to see you at Friday's rally.
A non-vote for Ingham
Darrell Piley Lawrence senior and three others for the Academic Freedom Action Coalition
This is to publicly thank Cynthia Ingham for her eloquent and insightful defense for not voting in the Nov. 8 Kansan. "My voice doesn't mean a damn to those who steal my money, whistle away at my rights and then tell me I have an obligation to sanction what is done in the name of 'democracy'" is the finest description I have seen of the politicians who recently squandered hundreds of millions of dollars on astonishingly shallow campaigns for our votes.
In regard to the presidential race, the thought of the ex-head of a secret police as president is frightening, but the Democrats, as always, offered no alternative. Dukakis showed his true colors when he chose Lloyd Tennant, a right-fronted Teapot and PAC special interests, as his running mate on the ticket of the party that supposedly represents the common person.
Ingham is right. The only political activity of value is done outside the voting booth — speaking out, resistance, etc. Those who say that people who don't vote have no right to complain are babbling irrelevancies. To complain about and agitate injustice is a condition of all conspiracy, furthermore, the government. They can be restricted by tyrannical governments and other forces, but they are not something benevolently awarded to some people for doing what they are told.
To those of us who believe that, no matter how many votes he received, George Bush has no mandate to continue robbing us of our freedoms in the name of national security or drug hysteria, no mandate to continue murdering Nicaraguans and other Central Americans in his fervor to install U.S.-subservient dictatorships (he calls them "democracies") and no mandate to continue helping the South African government agress against its neighbors: we lost the
election. But we never had a chance
Michael A. Vance visiting assistant professor of pharmacology and toxicology
Policies questioned
This is in response to a letter to the editor and a story recently published by the Kansan. My first comment concerns the Nov. 7 article written about the tragic death by hanging of a freshman in McCollum. The death of this young man surely must have been devastating for his parents, without the help of the Kansan alluding to apparent circumstances that might have led to that death.
c@mnsinstitute.
My second comment regards a letter to the editor which printed on the rights of the Ku Klux Klan to march in Philadelphia. This letter appeared in the Kansan in a cut version that left the authors' opinions about fascism diluted. Radical statements about fascism and the KKK were deleted, creating an editorial better suited to the tastes of the editorial board. Fortunately, the original version of the editorial has since been distributed about the KU campus.
Why do the editors find the renunciation of fascism too distasteful for print while they surreptitiously approve an article that increases the pain of those who knew and loved the student whose life was lost in an unfortunate accident? Your editorial policies seem dichotomous to me. Pain is intentionally inflicted by one article while the pain of past victims of fascism and the pain of ethnic and racial groups who are the current targets of the KKK is ignored. The Kansas's insensitivity regarding this article and letter is in need of introspection.
Stephanne Zale
Overland Park graduate student
BLOOM COUNTY
by Berke Breathed