Index
Previous
Next
Letter from Cybersalem #6
On June 13, 1995, Richard Cower, Intel Network Security Specialist and State's Expert for the trial in Oregon v. Schwartz, answers D.A. Tom Tintera's questions about Randal's Perl scripts and their effects on Intel security with considerable assurance:
Cower: "That program the way it was running at that moment, the first time we found it, it was pretty wide open to anybody on the Internet. If they had found it, they could have accessed Intel computer systems."
Tintera: "If I was on the Internet with my computer and I found that gate, I could just go through?"
Cower: "Yeah. Didn't have any safeguards on it."
Tintera: "What was -- In 1993 in October, were the safeguards such that in your opinion Intel was secure from Internet access on his Gate program?"
Cower: "I don't know without looking, without seeing the code again, and I haven't looked at it in quite a while." [1]
However, by July 24, when Cower testifies as an expert witness at the trial, a remarkable thing has happened.
Marc Sussman [Randal's attorney]: "You actually looked at -- did you actually examine the program script of each of the door and the gate programs that Mr. Schwartz wrote to allow access?"
Cower: "I've taken a very cursory look at those. I'm not a Pearl programmer, so it wouldn't really make any sense for me to examine it. I can't read the code." [2]
Richard Cower has unlearned Perl in 41 days! Not only this, but he seems to have forgotten he ever could read it, or that there was ever any point in his looking at Perl code.
Note 1: Tr. 6-13-95, page 113, lines 7 to 20.
Note 2: Tr. 7-24-95, page 57, lines 7 to 14. "Pearl" is how the name of the Perl language is given in the transcript. The transcripts regularly butcher the technical language, sometimes into incomprehensibility.
Index
Previous
Next