Security in Computing 5th Edition by Shari Lawrence Pfleeger, Charles P Pfleeger, Jonathan Margulies

Exercise 6

You acquire a network vulnerability scanning tool and try it out on a network address segment belonging to people at your university or business. The scanner identifies one computer named PrinceHal that has many serious vulnerabilities. You deduce to whom the machine belongs. Explain the ethical implications of (a) telling the owner what you have found, (b) telling your local administrator or security officer what you have found, (c) exploiting one of the relatively minor vulnerabilities to show the owner how serious the exposure is, (d) exploiting a relatively minor vulnerability as a prank without telling the owner, (e) telling the owner what you have found and then demanding money for details on the vulnerabilities, (f) using one of the vulnerabilities to acquire control of the machine, downloading and installing patches and changing settings to address all the vulnerabilities, and never telling anyone what you have done.

Step 1 of 6

Vulnerability scanning tool

a) The problem speculates on the ethics of informing an owner about vulnerabilities over the network. Since the owner of that node is the actual probable victim of a future crime, it is not only ethical, but highly advisable to inform him about the issue.