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

Re:MS never fix?

[anshil]

Can't we stop writing micro$oft and write microsoft like everybody else does?

Look the honest goal of I guess 98% percent of all companies is -money-, and this is normal capitalism. The ways of each to reach this goal are then something in the middle of between remarkable or despisable.

Writing micro$oft makes the OpenSource community just look immature. I remember when this word was especially negativly highlighted on the europe patent petition from some submissions,

if it ain't difficult just don't do it in the future, and so help :)