Shutting Down Worm-Infected Broadband Users

disc-chord writes "Frustrated by Code Red and now Nimda, the DSL provider DSL.net (a CLEC and reseller of Covad) has shut off 800+ infected customers. They claim they cannot get in touch with all of their customers, so they're just shutting them all down, and waiting for the customer to call them. When/if the customer does call they are informed that they are infected with the Nimda virus and must remove it before they will be reactivated. But how are customers supposed to fix the problem when their internet connection is shut down? " I say tough beans: If you get infected, it's your responsibility to get yourself cleaned up. The Internet is a peer-to-peer system where one peer can piss in the public pool. These ISPs are doing a good thing by keeping this crap off the net. Sure, a nicer tactic would be to disable low port numbers for infected users (my provider doesn't let them through in the first place) but this would likely just confuse users. At least this way they know what's up. Flame if you will, but all these worms are going to only get worse since Microsoft will never fix the problem without making sure people have to pay a monthly subscription for their OS, and users are unaware that they have to patch their boxes. ISPs shouldn't have to be responsible for their users this way, but they are responsible for keeping their other users online, and a few infected boxes can cause a lot of havoc for the whole net.

Comments

Most of them deserve it: They are pirates!

[Delirium Tremens]

[Sorry for this flamebait, but I hate hypocrites as much as I had thieves.]

Could somebody please tell me how is it that all those people run IIS on their home box? I won't believe that they all bought Windows 2000 (or even NT). Most likely, they just borrowed a CD from their work place to have a free (as in "I stole your beer") operating system.
It's not friendly but I am very happy that those hypocrites have been cut off the Net. If they didn't want to pay for their OS, they should have gone for BeOS, Linux, *BSD and the like. They can only blame themselves and consider themselves lucky nobody is knocking at their door to ask them their Windows License number.