On June 10, yet again, a joke about a script that deletes data from a production system circulated through the chats. And it raised a question for me — does the community understand what is happening and who is to blame?
So, specifically, the situation.
Vasya, the in-house sysadmin, manages the infrastructure of a certain business. And he is not very bright.
Vasya encountered a problem and went to the community (Telegram chat/forum) asking for advice. Vanya, the joker from this community, says, "Here, take this miraculous script, run it," knowing that Vasya will do this on the production system and that Vasya won’t read or understand what’s inside.
The result — deleted data, business downtime, loss of money.
The question of Vasya's guilt is not in doubt; he is undoubtedly at fault, having subjected the infrastructure to a kind of hack attack, violating all possible information security instructions.
I want to note separately that I would like to consider the situation from a moral, rather than a legal standpoint. What’s the difference?
- We don't need to prove that it was indeed Vanya. We don’t need to prove Vanya's intent. That is a well-known fact.
- We are not required to qualify Vanya's actions under any criminal code articles and try to pin a case on him.
- The question is simply whether Vanya can be considered guilty. To what extent is Vanya guilty?
Does Vanya bear moral responsibility for Vasya's actions, or is Vasya just a fool?
There is a common opinion in the community that Vasya is just a fool. Pwnd! Vanya did well to outsmart him, kek! At the same time, Vanya bears no blame for the consequences; it’s all on Vasya.
There is a less common opinion that Vanya is 100% to blame for setting up Vasya, and bears full further responsibility (in a moral, not legal sense) for the consequences — the fire, loss of life, financial losses. Ultimately, Vanya may be punished by the owner of this business in a 'forest' way regarding the matter.
I would like to hear the opinions of the broader community on this issue. Maybe even, if there are professional lawyers, a legal opinion.
P.S. The situation did not happen to me; I am neither Vasya nor Vanya and not even the manager of either of them.
Source: habr.com
