IP address conflicts

[Ted Mittelstaedt]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Peter Risdon [mailto:peter at circlesquared.com]
> Sent: Tuesday, September 28, 2004 3:42 AM
> To: Ted Mittelstaedt
> Cc: Matthew Seaman; Tim Aslat; freebsd-questions at FreeBSD.ORG
> Subject: Re: IP address conflicts
>
>
> It's nice to hear of kids understanding enough of their IT systems to do
> this sort of thing, and this is what they'll do if they can. But why can
> the pupils alter their network settings at all?

Because they own the machines?

> Assuming they have
> Windows machines, the registries can be tweaked to deny access to
> network settings and other things that creative minds can play games
> with. This can be done through their network logins.
>

Which they can easily bypass by just not running the login script.

The OP said that some of the systems on the network are student-owned
laptops and
student-owned desktops that students are bringing in from home
to plug into the school network.  Even if the admin successfully manages
to lock out the administrative settings on the laptops, a nuke and repave
will take care of that.  And there's serious questions about having
the authority to do this anyway.  The school does not own these systems
nor does it have the manpower to administrate all of them, even if every
student was happy to turn over administrative control.

Sure, you could say that the student has to give up administrative control
over his Windows box before getting access to the school servers - but the
people that are causing the trouble don't need access to the servers to
do this kind of disruption in the first place.  All they need is physical
acess to a network port and they are in business.  They don't even need an
IP number assigned to their systems.

Ted