Predict Worm Headlines, Win a T-shirt

At this moment, there's an office somewhere in Waggener Edstrom with its lights on and a fresh pot of coffee. Microsoft's PR firm is racking its brains working on strategy and tactics for their phone calls tomorrow. As of right now, hundreds of thousands of wormy Microsoft machines are throwing packets at the Bush White House (and missing -- see below). Bill Gates really, really doesn't want Sunday papers editorializing about how shoddy and dangerous his security flaws are. Will billg be the hero or the goat? Slashdot, in its fine tradition of laughing in the face of overworked netadmins, is running a contest. Walk a mile in Waggener Edstrom's shoes, predict the Times's headlines, and win yourself a T-shirt.

Waggener's goal is to minimize the PR damage that the worm will cause. This is potentially a very damaging story for them. Not so much because it underscores the dangers of an insecure, monocultural environment monopolizing our vital networks. Not even because of the embarrassing and ironic nature of the worm. More because it involves a hot button political topic -- Bush and, allegedly, China -- which the average reader will be interested in and might even almost understand.

So what's their battle plan?

Well, first Waggener will try to predict the yield. Our guesstimates as of right now, 11:36 PM EDT Thursday evening, are that it's a dud -- whitehouse.gov is still accessible and my IRC server hasn't gone down. This is probably because whitehouse.gov simply sidestepped its IP address (the stupid worm author hardcoded it instead of using DNS): White House dodges Web worm.

But at least 196,000 machines were infected. You'd think something would happen. Maybe a router will crash and Delaware will fall off the map. Who knows?

Second, Waggener will have an overall strategy. This might range from overhyping the potential danger ("turn off your computers! prepare for Armageddon! oh it didn't happen -- we saved you") to distraction with trivia ("we are pleased with the judges' verdict last week. look over there!"). How will the firm modify our reality?

Third, Waggener will use different approaches on different audiences. Reporters from different tech publications will talk to different handlers, and hear different things. Keep in mind which way these publications lean when you predict what their reactions will be.

Here's the contest. OSDN will be giving away four Slashdot T-shirts (or some other ThinkGeek shirt) to the four readers who most accurately predict newspaper headlines about the "Red Code" worm.

The newspapers of record we're using are the Washington Times and the New York Times. The categories are:

Headline on the Washington Times news story, Saturday morning
(label it: "WT News") Headline on the New York Times news story, Saturday morning
(label it: "NYT News") Title of the Washington Times editorial, Sunday morning
(label it: "WT Ed") Title of the New York Times editorial, Sunday morning
(label it: "NYT Ed")

Type up four guesses and submit them in a comment below. If your guess for any of the four is the closest in its category, you win a T-shirt!

For example, if our contest had been to predict headlines about global warming on July 19, and you'd said:

"WT News: Bush Visits Europe, Says Many Words Correctly
NYT News: Bush Promises Called Into Question
WT Ed: Good News on Global Warming
NYT Ed: Clueless on Global Warming"

...then you'd win, because you guessed the NYT editorial title correctly.

So put on your corporate-PR "spinning" caps, get out there and make us proud!

The Small Print:

1. Top headline only, you don't have to predict subheads or whatever.
2. In case of two stories/headlines, we pick the biggest one, our discretion.
3. Up to four guesses to a post, one for each headline (post early, post often, but slow down cowboy!).
4. One T-shirt to a person.
5. Ties go to the f1rst p0st.
6. No posts after the paper's out, of course (print or electronic, whichever's first) - first edition print is the goal.
7. No OSDN/VA Linux employees or relatives eligible.
8. You must either be logged in when you post or include one email address in your comment; email is how we'll contact you for your snail-mail address. Spamarmor it if you like, as long as we can read it.
9. If for some crazy, absurd reason one of the papers doesn't run a story/editorial about this at all, we'll go looking for a "similar" paper's story/editorial and pick its headline. We're thinking L.A. Times, Wall Street Journal, that kind of thing. If the papers actually run stories today (Friday), well, darnit that wasn't much of a contest was it? We'll still look for editorials on Sunday.
10. All judges' judgments are final.

Comments

Here is a SCREENSHOT!!

[Anonymous Coward]

www.wss.net/winupd.jpg

Re:Guesses?

[Roblimo]

Close, bubba, but not quite there. Some clever copyeditor somewhere had better write, "World Wide Web Worm Wars With White House" because it conforms to the old idea of what an ideal news story should contain: Five Ws and an H.*

- Robin

*Who, what, when, where, why and how.

Hackers Bush-Whacked

[Helmholtz]

Yeah, I know it's a horrible groaner ....

Re:Washington TIMES???

[Ian Schmidt]

Ahh, this must be the famous tolerance of the left I keep hearing about.

And who the hell wasted mod points on this? There's true comedy gold below...

MSN: Chinese Web Attack Fizzles on Whitehouse

[leonbrooks]

[subhead] Microsoft Opponents Frustrated As Worm Proves Harmless

MSN will focus on the political issues and try to avoid going anywhere near the 196,000+ systems infected, and similar issues.

Ummm, if the cracker has any brains (and any malice left) (s)he'll get his nice, fresh list of over two hundred thousand known-vulnerable targets and release a different worm that targets a number of whitehouse systems using a mixture of DNS and IP addresses. And maybe saves itself to disk and restarts on boot.

Meantime, for the longsuffering ASP dependents, we heartily recommend visiting the ASP2PHP website. And if you're not using ASP, put IIS+Windows in the bin now and install something decent in its place. Mandrake 8.0 should do.

My guess

[nebby]

For all of 'em:

Chinese "Code Red" Internet Worm misses White House, Microsoft issues fix

Because of course, this is the most positive way to word it for M$ :)

Re:Linuix hackers attack WhiteHouse !

[clifyt]

Heh! I know this is a Laugh Its Funny article, but the FUD has already started. Not against the hackers but against the system administrators.

They are going out of their way in mainstream publications to let it be known that the only reason these servers have been hacked is because of 'lazy' system administrators. They aren't even trying to blame the hackers as that would point to flaws in their system, but those of us that slave to keep their worthless systems up and running.

I for one have had all the patches installed and STILL been hacked. I keep charts of what is installed and when because my boss demands it...that and I don't want to be caught empty handed when something like this happens.

And to think my employeers forced me off of Mac WebStar & Unix Boxes running our networks to a standard Windows...

I know! I know!

[Mike Schiraldi]

Here's a headline i predict: "Predict Worm Headlines, Win a T-shirt"

--

Re:I know! I know!

[JBowz15]

AOL Headline:
"You've got worms!"

Re:Washington TIMES???

[Mike Schiraldi]

Taco: Okay, Jamie, we're going to use the New York Times and the Washington Post, got it?

Jamie: Got it. No problem. The Washington Times and the New York Post.

--

Forget about the contest...

[magic]

I bet $5 that the virus author:

1. reads CNN and Slashdot to fluff his/her/its own ego 2. silently thanks all of the kind people for pointing out the two "bugs" of hardcoding the IP instead of using DNS and not flooding if a connection can't be made 3. fixes and redeploys the worm.

It isn't open source, but decompilation makes everything open source. Isn't it great how the community can improve open source? And who's likely to be more responsive, a sys admin for a MS system or a virus author/copycat?

C'mon, you know you'd love to see a Microsoft bug take out the whitehouse site, anyhow.

-m

Re:who knows?

[Black Parrot]

> NYT News: Hackers use virus to attack whitehouse computers.

No, that will be

NYT News: Chinese Hackers use virus to attack whitehouse computers.

At any rate, you should expect all the headlines to include Chinese, hackers, cyberwar, and White House, plus however many other words will fit in the column.

Any editor who doesn't catch all of that should be put out to pasture.

--

hell, might as well try

[Platinum Dragon]

WT News: Chinese cyber-bullet is a dud
NYT News: Web worm misses target
WT Ed: Online threats, foreign and domestic
NYT Ed: Cyber-attack should be a wake-up call

bah...

Re:hell, might as well try

[HiQ]

NYT News: Web worm misses target
Second worm discovered behind grassy knoll - film at eleven!

My entries

[aonifer]

"Giant worm devours Bush"
"White House found to be infested with worms"
"Computer thingy does stuff to other computer thingy"
"Pedophilic, drug dealing, open source hackers attack White House"

My headlines

[niemiha]

WT News: Worms Try to Get into Whitehouse Doors through holes in Windows and Gates NYT News: Bush's new Bill: Bill, go to Bushes WT Ed: Bush's New Legislation: Worms are not Allowed Anymore - Microsoft Problems solved NYT Ed: Windows is Easy - Even Worms Can Send Mail ejem ;) hannu

My Guesses

[cybermage]

NYT News: "Cyberterrorists Attack White House During G8 Summit"
NYT Ed: "Tougher Punishment Needed For Hackers"
WP News: "Microsoft To De-worm Servers"
WP Ed: "America Needs To Prepare For E-Terrorism"

Re:I swear to God this is true

[Megor]

I can second that I got the same message once, tried reloading 100+ times and could not get it again!

Re:Headline Entry

[Rei]

You know, Hitler was widely admired in Germany, even by people who disagreed with his policies. Up until the end, the people living in the shelter with him saw him as a continued source of strength, even when he was resigned to die.

Ooop, Godwin's law, I lose :)

-= rei =-

I swear to God this is true

[harvardian]

I read about that worm today, so I went and downloaded the patch from MS's website. While I was at it, I went to Windowsupdate to see if I was missing any critical update packages. You know what I see when I go to windowsupdate??

Welcome to http://www.worm.com!
Hacked by Chinese!

I'm totally serious. I reloaded it and it never came back.

Re:I swear to God this is true

[krappie]

I saw it at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp or something. It was on tv, and I checked it out, and saw that message. Apparantly MS admits it didnt patch its own servers with its own security patch. How sad.

Also, I kept reloading it, and it was always there, but a friend of mine said he saw an international list of where to get explorer. Heh. So there is another weird thing.

But seriously, how does Microsoft expect to run all of these .NET services and passport authentication when their own servers seem to be hacked on a monthly basis?

Re:I swear to God this is true

[zhensel]

I was gonna call bullshit, but then I saw this. Bah... still could be a pretty good effort at starting an internet-urban-legend.

Ouch... something from the article worth repeating

[Misch]

we have had reports from administrators that have been probed by over 196 thousand unique hosts. This leads us to believe that this worm has infected at least 196 thousand computers

Now I feel sorry for Microsoft's PR department. Like the eeye security people, they're going to have to drink lots of Mountain Dew "Code Red" to stay awake and make the spins for the news.

Okay. I was deluded. I don't feel sorry for micro$oft. I'm downright laughing at them!

Did microsoft say something about potentially viral software somwhere? Ooops, this is a worm. NOt a virus. My bad.

Why not the National Enquirer, too?

[John Leeming]

WT News:White House Wary, Web Virus Attack Fails
NYT News: Hacker Virus Target White House, Misses
WT Ed: White House Web Worm A Wash
NYT Ed: Hackers and Politics: What Future Will the Internet Ruin for Democracy?

Re:Headline Entry

[IronChef]

His email address is actually billg@. Rumor has it that he spends a couple of hours every day on email.

A friend of mine once emailed billg, asking if there was any truth to the rumor that MS would be supporting the Lockheed-Martin Real3D chipset. (Obviously this was a long time ago!) He got back a 2-word answer:

"no truth"

There was no sig or anything else. But it was still kind of spooky.

who knows?

[b0r1s]

I'm gonna laugh my ass off if anyone actually gets this right .. the NY Times, and LA Times always massacre the truth right out of the headlines, so, I'm guessing it'll be something wrong, along the lines of:

NYT News: Hackers use virus to attack whitehouse computers.

Obviously wrong, but a good way to get some readers....

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Headline Entry

[BigBlockMopar]

His email address is actually billg@. Rumor has it that he spends a couple of hours every day on email.

I've heard that too, and it doesn't surprise me that he'd go for the first name thing. I've met the man several times (used to work for an audio-visual company, I put a lav mic on him during the Windows 95 World Conquest Tour), and he's really - urk - friendly and genuine. But everything becomes a race, a game. "Let's see if I can run this lav mic through my shirt before you can connect it to the mixer!"

What he didn't know was that the mixer was at the back of the room, so I was using a snake - basically a bus for mic cables. It was right under the podium. I plugged it in before he got the mic on, and he gave me a hell of a dirty look. >:)

"no truth"

You'd think there'd be at least a sig! Did he save the message and go back through the message headers? Heh:

X-Mailer: Gnus v5.6.45/XEmacs 21.1

Bill's secret is out. :)

But it was still kind of spooky.

His intensity and his absolute unwavering conviction that everything he (and, by extension, Microsoft) does is right is what spooks me the most. Ironically, while I loathe Microsoft, I admire his intelligence and his sense of humor. For example, I would bet money that he's seen the Bill Borg icon that Slashdot uses, and I'd also bet that he enjoyed it. Most computer geeks would like him in person, no matter how much we may abhorr his products.

Headline Entry

[BigBlockMopar]

Heh. Here's my entry headline:

"Worm Killed By Reboot: World Record 7-day Windows 2000 Uptime Over"

On a somewhat unrelated note, adding this:

0 12 * * * uptime | mail -s "Eat your heart out." "bgates@microsoft.com"

...to your crontab is a great way to brighten up Bill's morning.

Re:Headline Entry

[imipak]

My NT 4 box has 105 days' uptime at present. Not that it's running much... just BIND, a mail server, Apache, mod_perl, NAT-ing Internet gateway... oh and it's my workstation, too, so I'm using mozilla for mail and web, and experimenting with a load of stuff under cygwin. Of course, I'm probably just lucky, and yes I know 105 days is NBD. But it doesn't crash every 5 minutes, whatever your local neighbourhood zealot would have you believe.
--
"I'm not downloaded, I'm just loaded and down"

NO !! STOP !!

[ROBOKATZ]

Can't you see? They're just going to read this article, and pick the least damaging sounding headline from here.

SLASHDOT READERS WILL BE DOING THEIR DIRTY WORK FOR THEM.

In the name of all that is good, I beg you to stop!

Headline...

[sfe_software]

WT News: Early Worm gets the Bird
NYT News: Microsoft Denies Ally with China
WT Ed: Dubya is for Worm?
NYT Ed: default.ida?NNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN...

---

I couldn't think of anything clever, nor could I think of anything particularly humorous...

- Jman

Microsoft Initiates Government Outreach Program

[Pinchy]

The subject says it all...

my sad attempt

[bryan1945]

WT News: Microsoft counters US lawsuit.
NYT News: Senator Clinton says "Take that Bush!"
WT Ed: Finally, someone protests Bush election win!
NYT Ed: Mayor Guiliani announces New York City initiative for Microsoft-free zones.

All I can win is a stinking t-shirt?

[elgee]

I predict the future and all I can win is a t-shirt?

No thank you. My time is much more valuable than that.

Re:I swear to God this is true - B/C it is true

[Peridriga]

Yes... Microsoft's own servers was hacked...
Microsofts webservers are set up in a load-balancing format.. Meaning when you goto microsoft.com or updates.microsoft.com you aren't going to the same server every time or refresh. So if only one was infected (which is entirely possible b/c the worm spread by randomly choosing it's targets... Not just attacking obvious targets) then once every "x" number of time you would hit the infected server...

--- My Karma is bigger than your...
------ This sentence no verb
------ Ths sntnc n vwl