Forwarded from: Rob Rosenberger <junkmailat_private> This column is banned in Canada http://Vmyths.com/rant.cfm?id=598&page=4 IF YOU LIVE in Canada, you cannot legally read this column. Canadians must click here immediately to leave this website. Do not read further under penalty of Canadian law. Did the Canucks leave? Ah, good. Now I can talk to the rest of you. As you may know, Canada's University of Calgary recently announced they would offer a new "Computer Viruses and Malware" course where drunken undergraduate frat boys will write malicious software. Academic achievement takes on a whole new meaning here: the more malicious your code, the better grade you'll get. Anyone who went to college knows an underpaid, overworked teaching assistant normally supervises all lab assignments. However, the professor of "Malicious Computing 101" insists he will supervise the students during scheduled class times. A student will automatically flunk the course if a virus gets loose and tries to destroy the world (like the ILoveYou virus did in 2000). Frankly, this doesn't make any sense. I mean, shouldn't you get an A+ if you annihilate the Internet during Finals Week? Needless to say, the University of Calgary's announcement stirred up a global media controversy. Lots of experts around the world chimed in with commentary. Even our own Robert Vibert submitted a column. When I heard the University of Calgary would teach undergraduates to write viruses, I asked a simple philosophical question. "Will they let Mike Calce sign up for the course?" Very few people know Mike Calce is the infamous "Mafiaboy" who -- according to legend -- very nearly destroyed e-commerce in February 2000. According to one published report, "RCMP and FBI officials have estimated that Mafiaboy caused $1.7 billion in [global] damage." (Canadian dollars, I'll bet.) Suffice it to say the kid single-handedly terrorized the Internet -- if you believe the media and all of the fearmongers who rode on Mafiaboy's coattails. I won't bore you with the technical aspects of his diabolically ingenious teenage exploits; visit Mafiaboy.com if you need a refresher. Ironically, Canadian news organizations cannot legally identify Calce as Mafiaboy due to juvenile privacy laws. Now you know why this column is banned in Canada. Only in the computer security world can you keep your name out of the newspapers even after you plead guilty to a $1.7 billion crime. Mike Calce is as famously unknown as Murray Langston. Some Canadian newspapers even refused to identify the kid's father, John Calce, after police booked him for conspiring to (physically) assault another man. Tsk, tsk. Only in the computer security world, eh? OKAY, ENOUGH ABOUT the Mafiaboy mystique. Let's get back to my simple philosophical question. Will the University of Calgary let Mike Calce take their virus-writing course if he fulfills all of the normal academic requirements for it? Let's add a twist. As you may know, many politically correct university students sympathized with Al Qaeda in 1989. Will the University of Calgary teach a declared Al Qaeda sympathizer how to write malicious software if he/she meets all normal academic requirements? What if, say, our hypothetical student is a natural-born Canadian with no criminal record? Would the University of Calgary forbid someone to take the course based solely on the student's declared political sympathies? If the university forbids it, would they let the declared Al Qaeda sympathizer sign up for a SCADA Software 101 course instead? Let's face sarcasm/reality here, folks. If one self-taught Canadian high school student could single-handedly almost destroy e-commerce, just imagine what a horde of sheepskin Canadians could do! If the University of Calgary lets anybody attend their virus-writing course, then we may someday find ourselves facing a horde of Canadian 21st century glue-sniffing cybersluts with homicidal minds and handheld PDAs. A horde of Canadians led, perhaps, by none other than Mike Calce, aka Mafiaboy. I'd expect nothing less from a nation where (a) you can teach students to write malicious software but (b) you can't legally identity a convicted billion-dollar cyber-terrorist... - ISN is currently hosted by Attrition.org To unsubscribe email majordomoat_private with 'unsubscribe isn' in the BODY of the mail.
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