M04 Part 2 Cengage Module 8 Case Project
Jordan Thompson
CSIA 260
11/14/23
Discussion Questions
I would say it was the student who had changed the network configuration unauthorized. First the
student made a change in the network configuration without telling anyone he had, second, he wasn’t
even supposed to have changed the configuration in the network in the first place and third he didn’t
change the configuration back when he was finished with it. I think that Osbert position is defensible, he
didn’t change the configuration to allow his worm to go out the whole entire Internet. The student who
made that unauthorized change is the one who should be held responsible for the incident in the first
place. If Osbert is sued I think it would come down to the student who wasn’t supposed to change the
network configuration to be connected to the campus network and to the entire Internet as well.
Ethical Decision Making
I believe that Osbert was acting ethically when he wrote the worm. He made sure all the parameters for
the test were correct and functioning, he had no intention of having his worm spread throughout the
Internet, he only designed it for his class virtual network. Also, it sounds like that was what the
professors assigned for him and his class to do as an assignment, so he was only doing it for a grade on
an assignment. Plus, the professors designed the virtual network specifically for students to test and
infect as much as possible with their worm malware. I believe that Osbert professors were acting
ethically. The goal of the project was to teach how a worm can attack and spread throughout a network
and the problems that it causes. It could be argued that they should have prepared contingencies in
place if something went wrong in the deployment of the worms and it accidentally spread.
