[KLUG Members] Re: legality

[Mike Williams]

>
>Early this morning my Zone Alarm Firewall software started alerting me to
>the fact that a particular IP was trying to access my system. Upon further
>investigation I found that the IP in question was trying to access my PC
>using Netbios. So I in turn scanned the ip using a basic NT net view \\[IP]
>command.
>
>Well I found that the person computer was wide open. A share without a
>password was established on the PC's c:\ drive ... very bad.
>
>I felt sorry for the owner of the PC so I left a text file in the
>c:\windows\desktop\ folder named [SECURE YOUR SYSTEM.txt] with information
>on how to secure their broadband connection and remove some of the worms I
>noticed on their system.
>
>I also alerted the ISP of the PC.
>
>My question is... Can I get busted for this ? I didn't appreciate my
>Firewall blowing up like crazy so I wanted to take action.
>
>Thanx
>Rich

I doubt it.  Point 1, the Internet is the last great anarchy.  It's really hard to prosecute much other than copyright infringements on the Net.  Point 2, you didn't start it.  Your machine was under attack by another machine, although probably without the owner's knowledge.  Still, he should be responsible for the actions of his machine, and you gave him a much-needed crash course in safe computing.  If you had dropped a virus there or something, he might claim malicious destruction of data or something, but a harmless (actually helpful) text file?  I don't see a problem