Why Worm Writers Stay Free

savaget writes "There is an interesting Wired article explaining why worm writers are getting scott free despite their destructive deeds." Nothing really new: overworked law officials, bragging worm writers, you do the math ;) I still find it amazing. The bandwidth wasted by a successful worm is gigantic. To say nothing of time and disk space.

Comments

crimes?

[www.sorehands.com]

So if I leave a window unlocked, it is ok to break into my house? If a woman is wearing a short skirt, it is ok to rape her? You have cash on you, it is ok to mug you? You have a nice car, it is ok to car-jack you?

You should not be using insecure products, but that does not excuse the crime.

Re:crimes?

[tomstdenis]

"kids with too much time on their hands" who also happen to be ruining the internet for millions of people.

What if I was writting my Ph.D and I got this virus you wrote and it trashed it along with all my notes.

Well you just costed me a few years of my life. [yes backups are a good idea but its not upto you to force me to backup my data].

Their is more to virusses and worms etc then just "slow networks". For many it could cost them a serious portion of their lives.

Tom

Re:They aren't terrorists!

[Quasar1999]

The hell they aren't....

Think about how many people who use the internet (with Improperly set up windows machines, yes), who are as dumb as they come when it comes to computers... these people are literally terrorized when they get a virus or worm, or anything else that makes their computers harder to use then it already is...

Yes, people are not dying... but sit down beside some not so computer savvy user and watch their reaction when they get a virus... That look on their face is usually sheer terror. Followed by panic, yells for help, etc...

I don't know how you describe terror, but that sure meets my definition of it... (And yes, it's not as bad as what happend on 9/11, but it doesn't make this sort of, I hate to use the word, cyberterroism any less of a crime.)

Re:They aren't terrorists!

[overunderunderdone]

This is the sort of thing that really pisses me off. Not to say that virus writers don't do damage or even that they are not criminals but how can you compare a computer glitch to killing 3000+ people?

I totally agree, the terms are important. A terrorist is someone who commits acts designed to paralyse and undermine the society through fear. Obviously a virus or worm writer does NOT really fit that description. They are saboteurs a different but in some cases almost as serious crime.

The more common computer sabotage commited by individuals with various motivations are still significant crimes. Some people compare it to the relatively minor crimes of grafitti or willful destruction of property - but the scale of it can be so much larger and more widespread as to make it different in kind from, and more serious than most such crimes in the physical world.

But sabotage has also always been a technique of warfare, particularly assymetrical warfare. We will see computer sabotage used by terrorist organizations. In a state of war (declared or not) and in support of a declared enemy a saboteur in our borders or in the borders of our allies would be a war criminal - either an unlawful belligerant (if he is not a citizen) or a traitor (if he is a citizen.) In either case such a crime of sabotage is still potentially a capital offense - it doesn't matter if you as an enemy agent disrupt communications by blowing up the telephone exchange or by writing a virus, you are legally in a world of hurt. Yhe possibilty of commiting acts of sabotage through the internet while physically not in the targetted country is an interesting possiblity. If war is declared it would not be a war crime but a perfectly legitimage act of war, an attack on an enemies communications.

Unfortunately "terrorist" will probably be applyed to people commiting such acts of sabotage. People will use the term "terrorist" loosely to mean most forms of assymetrical warfare since "assymetrical warrior" seems unlikely to catch on. For instance a conventional act of sabotage analogous to a successful virus attack (blowing up a telephone exchange for instance) would probably be popularly termed a "terrorist attack" even if no one is killed and the goal was disruption of communictions rather than psychological damage.

Re:Terrorism: Blowing up buildings vs binaries

[szomb]

And frankly, the only two types of damage suffered in a terrorist attack are human suffering/death financial losses. I fail to see why wiping 1 million hard drives is necessarily qualitatively different from demolishing one building.

Hard drives do not contain people that get burned to death, buried by rubble, or forced to jump 90 stories, you miserable little puke.