|
Title: . Post by: CriminologyProf on August 16, 2017, 12:08:19 PM .
Title: Re: Just had an idea, but not sure how "legal" it is... Post by: Eyedol-X on August 16, 2017, 12:20:59 PM So I'm a grad student living in an apartment complex designed for college students. (Off campus living, not dorms.) Therefore, my apartment complex had a large 24/7 computer lab on the grounds that is free to residents. The computers are always on and logged in, requiring no account logins, 100% public. What would prevent me from going to this lab when it's empty in the early morning hours, downloading a mining program on each of them, and leaving it running in the background of each? I would then have 18 desktops mining simultaneously for likely days on end at a time. Would this be legal? Illegal? Gray area? Keep in mind my lease includes "full 24/7 access to the property gym, lounge, and computer lab." Wink wink. I'm pretty sure there is some legal fine print somewhere that would say you aren't allowed to interrupt or interfere with services provided. Aside from that the simple answer is any network or systems admin would likely already be blocking that kind of traffic or application on their systems/network so the miner may not work at all. If they don't block it, they may have it set to alert to the activity and once alerted you could get setup to be caught by authorities. Depending on how it's argued from a legal standpoint you could be accused of "hacking" or something else. It also could make you liable if a network vulnerability was created by what you did that lead to the network being compromised in some other way. Title: Re: Just had an idea, but not sure how "legal" it is... Post by: CarlOrff on August 16, 2017, 12:48:44 PM So I'm a grad student living in an apartment complex designed for college students. (Off campus living, not dorms.) Therefore, my apartment complex had a large 24/7 computer lab on the grounds that is free to residents. The computers are always on and logged in, requiring no account logins, 100% public. "full 24/7 access" is not "full 24/7 usage" : you have to sleep, to eat, to clean aso...What would prevent me from going to this lab when it's empty in the early morning hours, downloading a mining program on each of them, and leaving it running in the background of each? I would then have 18 desktops mining simultaneously for likely days on end at a time. Would this be legal? Illegal? Gray area? Keep in mind my lease includes "full 24/7 access to the property gym, lounge, and computer lab." Wink wink. Not legal, not gray area, but full illegal, of course ! How can you ask that ? And you are a grad student ? Poor USA... Title: Re: Just had an idea, but not sure how "legal" it is... Post by: Viperho on August 16, 2017, 02:44:52 PM ethically, no. i wouldn't do it. eventually it will be noticed by elevated temperatures/noise in the lab and will hamper your fellow students. Though no account logins is asinine. they kinda deserve to be hacked for lack of security of their students. you also have to assume there is most likely some basic monitoring software installed on a public computer. Though I wouldn't touch those computers with a ten foot pole.
Title: Re: Just had an idea, but not sure how "legal" it is... Post by: Za1n on August 16, 2017, 03:46:41 PM If it were legal you wouldn't be online on a forum like this asking if it were. Anyway, the easier solution would be to contact the school's IT department and ask them if your plan is OK and get the answer in writing if they would say yes.
But you and I and everyone else who reads this knows darn well the answer is not going to be yes. As already has been mentioned they will most likely block this type of traffic, or at least be monitoring for it so as to become aware of it. When I worked in corporate IT, I remember any public computers such as you describe also had a software installed that would basically revert the image to a known good baseline upon reboot, this coupled with a daily automatic reboot policy would wipe out anything like this that was installed anyway. Plus being a grad student, I don't think you want all your educational efforts diluted by a "tried to hack the school's network" annotation to your records, much less any criminal charges they might bring. It probably wouldn't come to that as I am certain they probably revert any changes as mentioned above and wouldn't worry about it unless you tried doing it everyday to workaround their system, but then again why take the chance. Edit, I misread the first time, but anyway just substitute apartment complex manager for anywhere I said school and the same principles apply. Title: Re: Just had an idea, but not sure how "legal" it is... Post by: Wysi on August 16, 2017, 07:42:09 PM Someone did this with doge years ago ;D
https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/harvard-student-uses-14000-core-supercomputer-mine-dogecoin/ Good luck! Title: Re: Just had an idea, but not sure how "legal" it is... Post by: Ben271286 on August 16, 2017, 07:50:33 PM Someone did this with doge years ago ;D https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/harvard-student-uses-14000-core-supercomputer-mine-dogecoin/ Good luck! "Odyssey and Research Computing resources can not be used for any personal or private gain or any non research related activity." Absolutely agree with that! Invest your own money like everybody else! Title: Re: Just had an idea, but not sure how "legal" it is... Post by: ghostwalker.ph on August 16, 2017, 07:57:46 PM Someone did this with doge years ago ;D https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/harvard-student-uses-14000-core-supercomputer-mine-dogecoin/ Good luck! i bet he's gonna follow this kind of footsteps. lol |