Recent Hacks Pose Legal Questions For Universities, Others, Cyberguard Experts Say - Company Business and Marketing - Brief Article

EDP Weekly's IT Monitor, Feb 14, 2000

The Chief Technology Officer of Internet security firm CyberGuard Corp. raised new concerns over the potential liability of universities, libraries and other organizations whose computers were unwittingly used for the recent denial-of-service hacking attacks on Yahoo!, Buy.com, Amazon.com, CNN.com and other Web sites.

"Just as an individual may be liable for injuries caused by an unsecured gun used to commit a crime, universities and other organizations may be liable for injuries caused by their unsecured computers that were used by hackers to commit these crimes," says Mike Wittig, CyberGuard's CTO. "This wave of hacks prove that there are a lot of loaded, unsecured guns out there on the Internet."

The new type of hack raises new and interesting legal questions for the universities and other organizations whose unsecured computers are able to be cooped by the hackers. "Right now, ignorance may be a defense for organizations whose computers are being used without their knowledge, but that may not be the case forever," says CyberGuard's in-house council.