Warning on account sharing

Roland John Turner (rjturner@nospam.socs.uts.edu.au)
Fri, 10 Nov 1995 09:08:39 +1100 (EST)

Greetings all.

This is a quick note on a topic that a few people seem not to have
grasped.

The sharing of accounts/UIDs/passwords on ProgSoc machines is simply
not acceptable. When (if) we (ProgSoc exec/admin - granted I am currently
officially neither :-)) need to investigate the origin of any activites
on the Net at large we need to be able to identify with certainty the origin
of events and potentially the ownership of files. Part of achieving this
is an absolute requirement that user accounts uniquely identify individual
human beings. Those human beings in turn need to be ProgSoc members.

The incidents that came to light recently revolve around collaborative
work by people unaware of the facilites that UNIX provides for such
endaevours.

If you are currently depending any such sharing arrangement to support
collabortive work, please notify myself or one of the admins in the
next 72 hours and we'll arrange a group ID (and perhaps a brief explanation
of how to use such a thing...). Any that come to light beyond that point
are likely to result in immediate, permanent loss off access to ProgSoc
machines. As with the UQ incident 6 months ago, we can't afford to be
seen as incompetent to administer Net connected machines.

Sorry for the less than positive tone of this. I had kind of assumed that
most folks already understood this. It was a bit of a surprise to find
otherwise...

- Raz

rjturner@nospam.socs.uts.edu.au

"It often upsets a man's God fantasies to have (Misquoted? from )
someone shoot down one of his helicopters." (Ben Elton's "Stark" )