Question

Evaluate the ethical issues as described in the scenario.

Jenny had discovered some new friends on the Internet—friends who shared her interest in programming. One of these new friends sent her a link to a new warez (illegally copied software) site.

She downloaded a kit called Blendo from the warez site. Blendo is a tool that helps novice hackers create attack programs that combine a mass e-mailer with a worm, a macro virus, and a network scanner. She clicked her way through the configuration options, clicked a button labeled “custom scripts,” and pasted in a script that one of her new friends had e-mailed to her. This script was built to exploit a brand-new vulnerability (announced only a few hours before).

Although she didn’t know it, the anonymous high-schooler had created new malware that was soon to bring large segments of the Internet to a standstill.

She exported the attack script, attached it to an e-mail, and sent it to an anonymous remailer service to be forwarded to as many e-mail accounts as possible. She had naively set up a mailback option to an anonymous e-mail account so she could track the progress of her creation. Thirty minutes later, she checked that anonymous e-mail account and saw that she had more than 800,000 new messages; the only reason there were not even more messages was that her mailbox was full.

Required:

Evaluate the ethical issues as described in the scenario.

(1000 to 1200 words)                                                                                                                

Answer 1

If we read this scenario carefully we find multiple Cyber crime activities happening here.

1. Illegal/unauthorised access

2. Software attacks/Viruses

3. Lack commendment by a Programmer

1) Illegal/unauthorised access –

Taking access of any software program or a hardware or a system without proper permission of owner is called as Unauthorised access. In our scenario a worm that spread via email is taking unauthorised access of Jenny’s email box.

2) Software attacks/Viruses –

A worm which gets created through Blendo tool which is only created for destroying or doing some un ethical activities is called as virus attack.

3) Lack of Commendment –

As a computer professional / programmer we have certain responsibilities on us. We have to use our resources, software ethically and for purpose of good for society. Using an illegal software is not accepted here.

Also, while using an external link it is always expected that a computer professional should scan it for virus and then use OR at least verify it before downloading.