merlyn says:
And you fail to draw the distinction I made yesterday. This is
important to the Perl community because it is me. There's no point in
bringing up what would happen if an "unfamous monk" posted a story
similar to this
You sense of self-importance is truly astounding.It appears Ovid's
response was entirely mistaken as far
as your motives for posting are concerned. It isn't about the law at
all. Its all about you. Your post's only import here being that the
personal problems and hardships endured are **yours** and not
some rank and file member of the community?? Wow. I don't believe you
even see yourself as _part_ of the community, you seem to hold
yourself as somehow outside and above the community.
As for claims by Randal and others that he was only doing his job
here are a couple of excerpts from his interviews by police and an
Intel superior. For full context please go and read everything
for yourself including the police reports and trial transcripts.
reports
court
Detective Lazenby's report:
I asked Randal why he would need forty to fifty passwords and he
said, "I needed them in case they caught me doing it and knew they
would shut me down so the more passwords I had, the longer I could
continue doing what I wanted to do."
Rich Cower's report:
Randal was asked why he was running the Crack process, and he
replied it was to keep his access open should his account on
Brillig be found and subsequently terminated. If the Brillig
account had been discovered, he needed another place to run
the "gate" program, and Crack would give him access to a system
to do that.
Rich Cower's report:
I asked when he had started using Brillig for his "gate" process.
Randal had moved the process to Brillig about 5 or 6 months ago,
after this process was discovered on a system named Mink. He
mentioned he was told not to run it on Mink and at this time he moved
it to Hermes, which he found too slow for his needs. He then changed
it slightly, and moved it back to Mink where it was found for a
second time. This occurrence resulted in the Mink system
administrator to remove his account
[at Randal's request according to court transcrips],
and Randal then moved the
process to Brillig. I asked when his contract an authorized access
to Brillig had ended, he responded with sometime in Oct/Nov/Dec of
92. He admitted he knew it was a violated of policy to do this, but
did it because he needed this access to respond quickly to email.
Randal explained that Rich Cower had put roadblocks up in the form of
policy and software to make what he wanted to do impossible.
Rich Cower's report:
I asked how he had obtained the SSD password file. Randal explained
that when he cracked passwords on the Brillig system, he had obtained
a password of a user named RONB. RONB also had an account on SSD,
and Randal admitted to using the RONB user name and password to
access SSD. Once Randal was on the SSD system impersonating RONB, he
could easily take the password file.
Randal's own words in the fors-faq:
As I have already said in this forum before, I answered
'yes' to the prosecutor's question of 'so you did this for
personal gain?', when in fact, what I was thinking of was 'well,
it was to keep my employment at Intel, and that benefits me
personally, so yes.'
I believe Randal was very afraid that he was being accused of
something dire and serious like espionage in those initial interviews
and he wanted to assure everyone that was not the case. He told the
truth. The truths he told then do not align with the stories he tells
today of standard operating procedure for sysadmins in the 80's. He
was NOT just "doing his job". He was doing things he was expressly
forbidden to do. He was NOT just trying help out and secure the
system like some white knight. What he was doing was for his own
benefit. Not selling secrets true but certainly not for atruistic
reasons. He had terminated his own SSD contract two months early due
to disagreements in decisions and policy there. Now much later under
a different contract with a different division he saw a way to both
get back at certain people there and thought he could win back some
respect and his job at SSD. Just doing his job. Please.
