Plethora of strange cracker newbie questions

[Andrew Murray]

I don't think requests like this are wierd. What
if they are trying to track the status of a server
on which they are hosting data? Set up a cron job:
to a)ping /scan the server b)email themselves with
any problems or c)attempt to contact them via irc...

Even if they are interested in cracking, virus/worm authoring
etc... I think such topics are a natural thing for a young programmer
to be interested in (for the theory, not the application) and usually people
learn a good deal about useful topics (tcp/ip stack, DNS etc) in the
process.
I think curiosity is always a great thing, as long as nobody gets
hurt : )

Andrew Murray
"Peter Hansen" <peter at engcorp.com> wrote in message
news:3B85E791.E18BA991 at engcorp.com...
> Is it just me, or does it look like there's a new world-wide
> organization of Python newbie crackers all asking questions
> here with an eye towards creating some Python script bent
> on world domination or at least other nefarious deeds?
>
> Recently we've had a spate of newbies who "need" to send email
> (bulk mailer slime?), ping stuff (target discovery), interact
> with IRC servers (anyone not read http://grc.com/dos/intro.htm
> yet?), and several others I've already forgotten, including
> some which as I recall would be useful in building elements
> of a virus.
>
> Whatever happened to the good old newbies who asked about
> how to create a file so they could track their video tape
> collections on their computers?  Why are they jumping
> straight to low-level script-kiddie stuff which few of
> us even get a chance to do?
>
> Not that I don't like newbies or anything, but maybe it
> wouldn't be wise to be quite so blindly helpful as most
> c.l.py inhabitants have been in the past.  Maybe some
> hesitation and just dumping working source at them would
> be advisable.
>
> Am I just overly sensitive?
>
> --
> ----------------------
> Peter Hansen, P.Eng.
> peter at engcorp.com