[H-GEN] (AUSCERT#38535) Re: The recient spate of port scans and intrusion attempts. (fwd)

David Starkoff dbs at humbug.org.au
Wed Jul 22 08:38:00 EDT 1998


On Wed, 22 Jul 1998, Robert Brockway wrote:

> > By the way, some of the excuses are cute.  You could plead
> > intoxication (s
> 
> There is a distinction between you making yourself intoxicated and someone
> else doing it (spiked drinks) too.

Oh stop being a party pooper, Const Brockway.  :-)  (From my dim, dark
recollection of criminal law, then if you consciously take the drinks,
then you can't plead s 28.  In other words, s 28 doesn't help you if you
only aim to get a little tipsy, but you end up getting blind drunk.)

> > 28).  Or mistake of fact (s 24).  Or, if you decided to try to hack into
> > AusCERT machines, then you should be able to sell insantity (ss 26, 27) to
> > the relevant tribunal.  Accidents are covered by s 23.
>
> Or my favourite, Extraordinary Emergency (s25).   "I had to break into
> that computer...my _life_ depended on it".  Gotta be able to prove it on 
> the balance of probabilites of course :)

I can't believe I forgot that one!

The even groovier thing about s 25 is that it can be piggy-backed onto s
24.  Section 24 says that if you make an honest and reasonable mistake
about certain facts, then you're only to be held liable for what you
believed to be the case.

There's a case where they were used together.  IIRC, the police charged
this guy with racing cars along Ipswich Road, outside the PAH.  Or
something like that.  When it came to trial, the guy argued that he
thought (on honest and reasonable grounds) that the person with whom he
was allegedly racing was chasing him.  So, he was trying to get away by
driving like a lunatic through public traffic.

In other words, he made a mistake of fact (s 24) so, he was to be judged
as if it was what he thought was happening.  He then pleaded s 25 to say
that it was an extraordinary emergency, and he can escape all liability.

He won.

(Applications of this principle to the computing sphere are left as an
exercise for the reader...)

> I'm not a lawyer either :)

Just one of those friendly chappies who arrests us if we break it, huh?
:-)

David.
--
dbs at humbug.org.au | http://student.uq.edu.au/~s343905/

``For my part, I find the proposition an affront to commonsense.''
        -- Justice Callinan





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