Randal L. Schwartz: Difference between revisions
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Revision as of 19:30, 13 November 2009
 | This article may lend undue weight to certain ideas, incidents, or controversies. (September 2009) |
Randal L. Schwartz | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | November 22, 1961 |
| Nationality | American |
| Other names | merlyn (internet handle) |
| Occupation(s) | Programmer, Author, Instructor |
| Employer(s) | Stonehenge Consulting Services, Inc. |
| Known for | Schwartzian transform |
| Website | www.stonehenge.com/merlyn/ |
Randal L. Schwartz (born November 22, 1961), also known as merlyn, is an American author, system administrator and programming consultant. Schwartz is the co-author of several widely used books about Perl, a programming language, and has written regular columns about Perl for several computer magazines. He popularized the Just another Perl hacker signature programs. He is a founding board member of the Perl Mongers, the worldwide Perl grassroots advocacy organization. He is currently a co-host on FLOSS Weekly.
Schwartz's name is also associated with the Schwartzian transform, an algorithm to efficiently sort a list according to a computation, without repeating the computation many times for each element of the list.
Since 1985, Schwartz has owned and operated Stonehenge Consulting Services, Inc.
Conviction
In July 1995, Schwartz was convicted in the case of State of Oregon vs. Randal Schwartz. According to the prosecution, Schwartz (consulting at that time for Intel as a system administrator) illegally bypassed computer security, gaining access to computers on which his accounts had been disabled, by means of other users' passwords and a backdoor program called "gate", in order to gain access to a password file. According to Schwartz, he was trying to show that management employees of Intel were selecting passwords that could be easily guessed by individuals who then could compromise computer security. A good example of this was a vice president using "pre$ident" as a password—the use of words from a dictionary, and variations thereof, is frowned upon because they are easy to guess. Prosecutors rebutted that Schwartz failed to notify anyone at Intel of the security weaknesses, and further alleged that Schwartz had admitted that he "needed them in case they caught me doing it and they would shut me down", depriving him of access to Intel's computer resources. Prosecutors also charged that he had transported a password file without permission, though it has been noted that this transportation was merely from one Intel host to another.
In view of the fact that proactively cracking bad passwords has become an accepted computer security safeguard, and that performing such services was part of Schwartz's job and he made no special attempt to conceal the activity, and perhaps because Schwartz was well known and had many friends online, the F.O.R.S. (Friends of Randal Schwartz) web site was erected to tell Schwartz's story, explain what happened, and espouse his perceived innocence.
Schwartz was convicted on all three felony counts, with one reduced to a misdemeanor. On September 11, 1995, he was sentenced to five years probation, a fine of US $ 68,000, and left to pay about US $ 170,000 in personal legal bills.[1]
On February 1, 2007, his arrest and conviction records were sealed through an expungement action, and he is legally no longer a felon.[2]
Bibliography
- Programming Perl, ISBN 0-937175-64-1; ISBN 1-56592-149-6 (2ed)
- Learning Perl, ISBN 1-56592-042-2; ISBN 1-56592-284-0 (2ed); ISBN 0-596-00132-0 (3ed); ISBN 0-596-10105-8 (4ed) [1] (2005)
- Intermediate Perl, ISBN 0-596-10206-2 (2006)
- Learning Perl on Win32 Systems, ISBN 1-56592-324-3
- Learning Perl Objects, References & Modules [2] (2003), ISBN 0-596-00478-8
- Effective Perl Programming, ISBN 0-201-41975-0
- Preface for Object Oriented Perl, ISBN 1-884777-79-1
- Collected columns in Randal Schwartz's Perls of Wisdom, ISBN 1-59059-323-5
References
- ^ Intel v. Randal Schwartz: Why Care? by Jeffrey Kegler, February 4, 1996.
- ^ State of Oregon vs. Randal Schwartz - Case summary