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

Trivial? What will happen with a "real" virus?

[jjsaul]

As the article implies, authorities deem these attacks trivial because they cannot see actual physical damage done to equipment. Economic damages, bandwidth loss, destroyed data, and wasted time are harder for a cop to take seriously than, for instance, a body on the ground. Of course, the fact that virus writers are usually script-kiddie teenagers helps to make the attacks seems like pranks. It is an interesting thought experiment to consider what will happen when a teenager playing in an advanced biology course cultures a virulent bacteria or virus. Or consider if "goner" had been tracked to the other side of the tanks... to a group a Palestinians.

Aren't we going after the wrong people?

[linuxrunner]

I mean shouldn't we go after the people who are dumb enough to open up stange attachments and spead the Goner Viurs....

Or how about going after Microsoft for leaving gaping holes in IIS or in good olde stand-by Outlook Express. You know, the staple e-mail client that everyone uses to spread these viruses....

Anyone can write a virus.... We need to educate and create barriers to stop your average villige idoit from opening up viruses.... even if it mean having a pop-up on outlook that recognizes .exe files, .com, .pif, .bat, heck anything and says "are you sure you want to open this? This may contain a virus." and voila... that will probably cut our virus spreading down by half!!!!

Re:Aren't we going after the wrong people?

[loteck]

Yes.. why are we going after Osama? Why aren't we going after those STUPID airlines? Why dont they have automatic-terrorist-detector-killer machines on every plane? I mean.. DUH...

Blame the gunmaker, instead of the person who committed the murder.

Blame the programmer, instead of the person who wrote the malicious code.

Blame someone else, just not me. make sure that we never get it back down to personal responsibility, because the liberal left hates that. They are just itching for you whine and complain yourself into slavery, to trade your freedoms so they can give you "security".

People need to get a clue.

viruses are a form of speech

[Cardhore]

It's not the virus writers fault for all these shenanigans. It's the computer owner's fault. The virus is simply a string of bits. It doesn't do anything by itself. But you running the virus on your computer makes you responsible. You should know exactly what your computer is doing at all times. If you can't handle a multitasking operating system (that runs viruses in the background) maybe you should write all your software in assembly so you know exactly what your computer is doing at all times.