Antisniff

[nihil]

Yes, and as well as short staffed I would guess their hardware/infrastructure budget is pretty limited, so they wouldn't be able to handle much in the way of performance hits.

You made this observation:

I think there's a tendency when one gets into 'security' tools to not realize how powerful they are and what they're doing to others.

That is very true, and it occurred to me that most of these systems administrators' tools are generally only intended to be run as a single instance on any given network.

When you get a number of kids running the same tool over the same network it would doubtless produce a pretty big performance hit? A bit like running 5 AVs or firewalls at the same time?

It would be intermittent, and I bet it drove the admin crazy.

so pretty much all it takes under USC (federal law) for a felony computer crime to have occurred is $5000 worth of damage. How do you show that?

From what the guy says he was busted by the police, not the Feds?....... they would have just busted his bawlz and got on with their next case.

That brings up the issue of "damage" and "cost". If you trash a server or workstation such that it has to be restored/rebuilt then that is "damage" and anything else is a "cost".

Over here, you would be allowed anything it took to restore your system to the condition it was in before the incident, plus any expenses to maintain your service levels whilst the problem was being resolved.

I see the problem in the US as being that you have rushed into legislation in areas that the legislators did not understand; and the problem with legislation is it kind of "sets things in stone"? Don't worry, we have the same problem with our legislators

Looking at it from an equity/tort angle (civil law) I would take this view:

1. The kid broke the school rules: that is an internal disciplinary matter
2. The school incurred additional costs related to the incident
3. The parents are responsible for those costs

In the UK this incident would not involve the police, they would not be interested as it is neither a misdemeanour nor a felony over here.

For that you would require unauthorised access or criminal damage, and you can't have criminal damage without proving criminal intent.

Of course, if you ran a sniffer on the administrative network then that would be unauthorised data access, which is a whole different ballgame.