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27-Sep-85 07:53:01-PDT,14863;000000000000 Mail-From: NEUMANN created at 27-Sep-85 07:51:56 Date: Fri 27 Sep 85 07:51:56-PDT From: RISKS FORUM (Peter G. Neumann, Coordinator) <RISKS@SRI-CSLA.ARPA> Subject: RISKS-1.17 Sender: NEUMANN@SRI-CSLA.ARPA To: RISKS-LIST@SRI-CSLA.ARPA

RISKS-LIST: RISKS-FORUM Digest Friday, 27 Sep 1985 Volume 1 : Issue 17

FORUM ON RISKS TO THE PUBLIC IN COMPUTER SYSTEMS Peter G. Neumann, moderator

Contents: SDI debate announcement Minor risk to the pocket book (Eugene Miya) Social Impacts of Computing: Graduate Study at UC-Irvine (Rob Kling) Friendly enemy test teams (John Mashey) More protocol goofs (Dave Curry)

Summary of Groundrules: The RISKS Forum is a moderated digest. To be distributed, submissions should be relevant to the topic, technically sound, objective, in good taste, and coherent. Others will be rejected. Diversity of viewpoints is welcome. Please try to avoid repetition of earlier discussions.

(Contributions to RISKS@SRI-CSL.ARPA, Requests to RISKS-Request@SRI-CSL.ARPA) (FTP Vol 1 : Issue n from SRI-CSL:<RISKS>RISKS-1.n)

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Date: 26 Sep 1985 17:48-EST From: genrad!teddy!lkk@mit-eddie.MIT.EDU Subject: SDI debate announcement To: risks@sri-csl.arpa

Dear Colleague,

Computer technology plays an ever-increasing role in the arms race. The Strategic Defense Initiative (`Star Wars') is a leading example of a military system in which almost complete reliance will be placed on computerized decision making. The feasibility and desirability of this system are currently undergoing serious public debate.

On Monday, the 21st of October, at 8:00 pm in M.I.T.'s Kresge Auditorium, the M.I.T. Laboratory for Computer Science and Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility are co-sponsoring a public forum designed to raise many of the technical issues surrounding the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI).

Professor Michael Dertouzos, Director of the M.I.T. Laboratory for Computer Science, will moderate a debate on the feasibility of software development for the SDI project. Dr. Danny Cohen (Director of the Systems Division at the University of Southern California's Information Sciences Institute and Chairman of the Strategic Defense Initiative Organization panel on Computing in Support of Battle Management (SDIO/CSBM)) and Professor Charles Seitz (Professor of Computer Science, California Institute of Technology and member, SDIO/CSBM)) will speak in favor of the SDI proposal. Professor David Parnas (Lansdowne Professor of Computer Science, University of Victoria, Canada) and Professor Joseph Weizenbaum (Professor of Computer Science, Massachussetts Institute of Technology) will take the position that such a software development project is infeasible.

Professor Parnas' resignation from the SDIO/CSBM panel in June of this year, and the set of memos he wrote discussing the infeasibility of the SDI project attracted extensive press coverage in June of this year.

CPSR will be holding a reception for the speakers at La Groceria (853 Main Street in Cambridge) between 6:30 and 7:30. Please join us for dinner and an opportunity to meet some of the panelists. The $25 per plate donation will help us cover expenses for this forum and related projects. Please RSVP to Mark Vilain at (617) 648-4325.

Earlier that afternoon, the M.I.T. Technology and Culture Seminar will sponsor a talk by Dr. James Ionson, Director of the Office of Innovative Science and Technology for the SDIO. After Dr. Ionson describes the general research goals of SDI, two M.I.T. professors will respond with varying views on why they have chosen to accept or refuse funding for research from the SDIO. A student representative will report on student reaction to Star Wars projects on campus. This talk will be held at MIT in building 9, room 150 at 4:00 p.m.

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From: eugene@AMES-NAS.ARPA (Eugene Miya) Date: 26 Sep 1985 1652-PDT (Thursday) To: risks@sri-csl.ARPA Subject: Minor risk to the pocket book

Here is a minor man-machine risk which occurred today (9/26) in the Silicon Valley at El Torito [popular Mexician food chain] at lunch. We arrived for a late lunch and found that our bill was 50% over what appeared in the menu. The cash register [one of those computer systems where they press buttons rather than prices] was running on the dinner menu prices rather than the lunch menu prices. Since we arrived late, everybody else [e.g., hundreds of people] were over-charged for lunch that day and perhaps earlier. This implies several things about the way customers in Si Valley treat their bills [rich? no verification? ...] What about the restaurant?

From the Rock of Age Home for Retired Hackers:

--eugene miya, NASA Ames Research Center, eugene@ames-nas.ARPA

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Date: Fri, 27 Sep 85 12:01:18 EST From: munnari!mulga.oz!bjpt@seismo.CSS.GOV (Benjamin Thompson) To: risks@sri-csl.ARPA Subject: Re: Technology and Morality Organization: Computer Science, University of Melbourne

Nicholas Spies writes [in RISKS-1.13]:

> ... Hitler opened the Pandora's Box of applying >high-tech to warfare and it worked (at least until a higher-tech response >prevailed).

Technology has been successfully applied to warfare for millenia. Alexander the Great didn't win through having a bigger army (he didn't); he had better weapons (e.g. he found out that ballistae propel spears faster than people do). (and he had better trained soldiers etc. - education and technology basically).

> After WWII a new era was born in which global political power no >longer rested on moral authority but on a command of the new applied >sciences and scientists.

Nothing could be further removed from morality than the way in which global political power is grabbed and maintained. It has always been based upon physical strength (which usually, but not always, corresponds to technological strength). History is a never-ending sequence of examples.

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Date: 26 Sep 1985 0920-PDT From: Rob-Kling <Kling%UCI-20B@UCI-ICSA> Subject: Social Impacts of Computing: Graduate Study at UC-Irvine To: risks@SRI-CSL CORPS: Graduate Education in Computing, Organizations, Policy, and Society at the University of California, Irvine

This graduate concentration at the University of California, Irvine provides an opportunity for scholars and students to investigate the social dimensions of computerization in a setting which supports reflective and sustained inquiry.

The primary educational opportunities are PhD concentrations in the Department of Information and Computer Science (ICS) and MS and PhD concentrations in the Graduate School of Management (GSM). Students in each concentration can specialize in studying the social dimensions of computing.

The faculty at Irvine have been active in this area, with many interdisciplinary projects, since the early 1970's. The faculty and students in the CORPS have approached them with methods drawn from the social sciences.

The CORPS concentration focuses upon four related areas of inquiry:

1. Examining the social consequences of different kinds of computerization on social life in organizations and in the larger society.

2. Examining the social dimensions of the work and organizational worlds in which computer technologies are developed, marketed, disseminated, deployed, and sustained.

3. Evaluating the effectiveness of strategies for managing the deployment and use of computer-based technologies.

4. Evaluating and proposing public policies which facilitate the development and use of computing in pro-social ways.

Studies of these questions have focussed on complex information systems, computer-based modelling, decision-support systems, the myriad forms of office automation, electronic funds transfer systems, expert systems, instructional computing, personal computers, automated command and control systems, and computing at home. The questions vary from study to study. They have included questions about the effectiveness of these technologies, effective ways to manage them, the social choices that they open or close off, the kind of social and cultural life that develops around them, their political consequences, and their social carrying costs.

CORPS studies at Irvine have a distinctive orientation -

(i) in focussing on both public and private sectors,

(ii) in examining computerization in public life as well as within organizations,

(iii) by examining advanced and common computer-based technologies "in vivo" in ordinary settings, and

(iv) by employing analytical methods drawn from the social sciences.

Organizational Arrangements and Admissions for CORPS

The CORPS concentration is a special track within the normal graduate degree programs of ICS and GSM. Admission requirements for this concentration are the same as for students who apply for a PhD in ICS or an MS or PhD in GSM. Students with varying backgrounds are encouraged to apply for the PhD programs if they show strong research promise.

The seven primary faculty in the CORPS concentration hold appointments in the Department of Information and Computer Science and the Graduate School of Management. Additional faculty in the School of Social Sciences, and the program on Social Ecology, have collaborated in research or have taught key courses for CORPS students. Our research is administered through an interdisciplinary research institute at UCI which is part of the Graduate Division, the Public Policy Research Organization.

Students who wish additional information about the CORPS concentration should write to Professor Rob Kling (Kling@uci-icsa), Department of Information and Computer Science, University of California, Irvine, Irvine, Ca. 92717, 714-856-5955 or 856-7548, or Professor Kenneth Kraemer (Kraemer@uci-icsa), Graduate School of Management, University of California, Irvine, Irvine, Ca. 92717, 714-856-5246.

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Date: Wed, 25 Sep 85 01:17:53 pdt From: mips!mash@glacier (John Mashey) To: risk@sri-csl.ARPA Subject: Friendly enemy test teams

John McCarthy <JMC@SU-AI.ARPA> writes in RISKS-1.10:

> 2. My opinion is that if the physics of the problem permits a good > anti-missile defense the programs can be written and verified. However, it > will be quite difficult and will require dedicated work. It won't be done > by people who are against the whole project. Computer checked proofs of > program correctness will probably play some role. So will anticipating what > kind of bugs would be most serious and putting the biggest effort into > avoiding them. Having many people go over and discuss all the critical > parts of the program will also be important.

Perhaps the best way to make it work WOULD be to have a test team of people (who might be skeptics, at least) trying to break it. Most large complex projects that actually worked, at least that I've seen, have succeeded at least partly because they had a large test team who didn't believe anything worked until it could get past the worst of their tests. I don't know what the ratio is elsewhere, but many complex ATT/BTL projects allocated 30-50% of the staff to building test frameworks designed to stress the system under test. Consider the recent history of evaluation of new military systems (like the Sergeant York). It's very hard for the builders of something to evaluate it well; you need a good enemy for that.

[Tiger teams have indeed had some success in finding the more obvious program bugs, but in general many flaws may remain. This topic has been raised superficially in past issues. Perhaps we are ready for some detailed discussions on the strengths and limitations of testing. PGN]

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Date: Thu, 26 Sep 85 22:29:41 EST From: davy@purdue-ecn.ARPA (Dave Curry) To: risks@sri-csl.arpa Subject: More protocol goofs

[The original message contained 8576 characters, almost exclusively headers. I have pruned it to give just the flavor. PGN]

I'm forwarding this as a wonderful example of protocols getting completely hosed... this mail of mine bounced for some unexplained reason. I resent the message the same day this came back, and it went through just fine.

Looking at the headers should make the problem more than obvious...

--Dave Curry

Return-Path: <decvax!mcnc!unc!unc!unc!unc!unc!unc!unc!unc!mailer-daemon> Received: from ee.ECN by ec.ECN; Thu, 6 Sep 84 19:48:01 est (4.12/5.20) From: decvax!mcnc!unc!unc!unc!unc!unc!unc!unc!unc!mailer-daemon Received: by ee.ECN; Thu, 6 Sep 84 19:47:35 est (4.12/5.20) Return-Path: <decvax!mcnc!unc!unc!unc!unc!unc!unc!unc!unc!mailer-daemon> Received: by decvax.UUCP (4.12/1.0) id AA24764; Thu, 6 Sep 84 02:25:55 edt Received: by mcnc (4.12/4.7) id AA00613; Wed, 5 Sep 84 18:51:54 edt Original-From: <unc!unc!unc!unc!unc!unc!unc!unc!mailer-daemon@mcnc> [... and so on iteratively, ad nauseum, down to... ] Received: by unc (4.12/4.7) id AA06045; Wed, 5 Sep 84 09:07:16 edt Original-From: <mailer-daemon@mcnc> Received: by mcnc (4.12/4.7) id AB15479; Wed, 5 Sep 84 08:01:18 edt Date: Sat, 1 Sep 84 10:03:51 est Original-From: Mail Delivery Subsystem <MAILER-DAEMON@mcnc> Subject: Returned mail: Unable to deliver mail To: mcnc!mcnc!unc!mcnc!unc!mcnc!unc!mcnc!unc!mcnc!unc!mcnc!unc!mcnc!unc!mcnc!pur-ee!davy@unc

----- Transcript of session follows ----- 554 sendall: too many hops (30 max)

----- Unsent message follows ----- Received: by mcnc (4.12/4.7) id AA15479; Wed, 5 Sep 84 08:01:18 edt From: <mcnc!mcnc!unc!mcnc!unc!mcnc!unc!mcnc!unc!mcnc!unc!mcnc!unc!mcnc!unc!mcnc!pur-ee!davy@unc> Received: by unc (4.12/4.7) id AA03055; Wed, 5 Sep 84 07:04:54 edt Original-From: <mcnc!mcnc!unc!mcnc!unc!mcnc!unc!mcnc!unc!mcnc!unc!mcnc!unc!mcnc!unc!mcnc!pur-ee!davy@mcnc> [...]

[I am reminded of the tale of the unattended British power station equipped with an automatic calling unit to report troubles. When it finally had to dial the emergency reporting number, it received a recorded message that the number it had dialed was not valid. PGN]

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End of RISKS-FORUM Digest ************************ -------