General Instructions. Students are required to work in groups of 2 or 3 for this assignment. An assignment submitted on behalf of a "group" comprising only a single student will receive a grade of F.
Hand in a single hardcopy, typeset (in 10 point or larger font), for the entire group. The names and student ids for all group members should appear on the first page of the assignment. All members of the group are responsible for understanding the entire assignment.
No late assignments will be accepted.
Academic Integrity. Collaboration between groups is prohibited and will be treated as a violation of the University's academic integrity code.
Background. Society functions as well as it does because there are accepted standards for ethical behavior. Some of these standards are codified as laws; others are codified as policies. Since you may someday be asked to write such a policy or to evaluate somebody's actions relative to such a policy, it seems sensible to start our study of computer security by learning a bit about policies governing computing use. And one of the best ways to understand the consequences of a policy is to consider specific examples of behaviors.
The Cornell University policy on computer abuse can be found at
http://cuinfo.cornell.edu/Computer/responsible-use/Index.html.
For each of the following scenarios, state
Case I. Cornell student X, who knows nothing about figure skating, sends email to ten friends, all of whom are Cornell students and all of whom share similar opinions and political views. The email is a list of 75 reasons "why male Figure Skaters should not be allowed freedom of speech".
Case II. Cornell student X, who knows nothing about figure skating, sends email to the entire Cornell University internet domain (i.e., "@cornell.edu"). The email is a list of 75 reasons "why male Figure Skaters should not be allowed freedom of speech".
Case III. Cornell student X, who knows nothing about figure skating, sends email to the entire Cornell Figure Skating Club. The email is a list of 75 reasons "why male Figure Skaters should not be allowed freedom of speech".
Case IV. Cornell student X writes a program that, once started, migrates to each UNIX site in the Cornell University internet domain and then terminates, doing no harm and consuming virtually no resources. Student X then runs this program, being careful to start it during the winter recess, when the university's network and computers are lightly utilized so that no user is inconvenienced. The program runs and terminates as expected, with nobody noticing.
Case V. Student XX obtains the program written by student X of Case IV and modifies that program as follows. Upon reaching each computer, the program inspects the directories on that computer and reports back to XX any files that contain known viruses. Student XX then runs this program, being careful to start it during the winter recess, when the university's network and computers are lightly utilized so that no user is inconvenienced. The program runs and terminates as expected, with nobody noticing.