Slashdot Mirror
Curious Yellow, Superworm
jpmccord writes "Brandon Wiley's white paper, Curious Yellow, explains how "a superworm -- a worm that coordinates it actions among infected hosts and launches a massive distributed denial of service attack on any hosts it can't infect using those it can" (via disLEXia, a weblog by Maximillian Dornseif). The "doomsday scenario" frightens "even us", says Dornseif. An accompanying discussion rebukes Wiley's article a bit. Aaron Swartz's light-hearted take is rather entertaining: "So go read it now and find out how you can take over the whole Internet. And if you're going to, could you give me 24 hours notice?""
...this was posted some days ago, I'm just too lazy to go find the link.
Who is General Failure and why is he reading my hard disk?
Sweet friggin christ. If it's a dupe, REMOVE IT.
88 Miles an hour and shit
The "doomsday scenario" frightens "even us", says Dornseif.
Doomsday? Hey guys, it's the internet! Who's gonna die if the internet shuts down? Come on now, it's not like the next ice age or nuclear war! 99% of worlds population won't give a shit if the internet shuts down for a few days. Who cares if a bunch of nerds freak out 'cause they can't read their emails?
The main question is, are YOU so addicted to the net, that you would use the term "doomsday", if it shuts down?
If you really think about it, the math behind such an event may not work out....My guess is, there simply aren't enough hosts on the net that are simultaneously A) succeptible to infection B) sitting on static IPs, and C) unmonitored by human eyes. All three conditions must exist in order for the worm to propogate -- If any one of those factors is absent, that particular thread of the superworm is halted. It makes the scenario described in this article practically impossible. Sure, a superworm may exist, but it would be so slow-moving and predictable that it would be no more a threat than any other form of DoS attack.
If you really want something abstract to think about, consider this: How is this "superworm" different than, say, a non-existant website mentioned on a nationwide TV broadcast? Instead of malicious code generating the resulting network congestion, its humans -- The net result is the same -- The effect will taper off as T increases. Nothing to really worry about, in other words.
Yeah, I know. I'm sure someones gonna come back and read this 10 years from now and want to slap me silly with a 10 lbs. trout, for my lack of forethought.. But seriously, I think these sort of stories are more along the lines of interesting fiction than they are real-world possibilities.
Cheers,
Bowie J. Poag
The people who catch it, however, are turned into attack zombies primed to attack specifically the immune humans.
Many novels based on vampires or zombies have this idea.
I Am Legend by Richard Matheson is a personal favourite.
Enjoy
indecision
Agreed. This isn't a homegrown site anymore, they're paid for this.
Surely they can take the time to write a cross-checker to see if any of the links in the submissions have been used in any previous stories, after redirects.
Surely it can't be that hard...
I briefly browse Slashdot every day; not religiously, but skim through, and even I can spot these dupes just through memory. If someone employed here can't remember that, it's abysmal.
I guess the point is, that's why these guys don't have professional journalism jobs. I'm not sure why they're called "editors" (seeing as they don't correct any spelling errors). Maybe "story selectors" would be more appropriate, and a system where readers moderate-up stories. Of course, this would make the editors' jobs redundant, but they don't do anything of worth at the moment.
In short, I like Slashdot -- the comments and the stories. But they're grossly unprofessional and would have trouble finding work in real writing circles.
I find it ironic that there are at least SIX virtually identical (repetitive), upmodded comments about this being a repeat story.
Sad.
S
What bothers me is the ideas sparked by reading the article. In an ideal world information should be free, but in reading this I envisioned several things not mentioned in the article. Thoughts are dangerous in the wrong hands.
There are Cyber task forces so secret no one knows about them. Governments could very well be working on something like this for cyber weapon purposes.
The ideas represented are enough to keep a smart person up nights. There are those who could make this happen quite easily. These same people have morals and wouldn't do it. But what if those same people worked for a government and were tasked to actually do it? Or worse were radical extremists?
Not so far fetched when you look at the creation of weapons of mass destruction. Biological, Nuclear, etc. Someone thought this stuff up and some government tasked them with making it happen!
The point of the article was technology. However, the possibilites of using said technology are unlimited.
There are those covert experts who don't blab about exploits. These people keep a secret and use it to their advantage when they need it. They don't go willy nilly and release a virus to expose the faults. They use these faults in a focused manner.
Just how many of these covert experts are working for governments right now. Under blackbag operations where the money is virtually unlimited.
Yeah I may sound like a conspiracy nut but a whole lot goes on in this world that the average person is totally unaware of. There are games of life and death being played out every day. Do we live in the dark and believe in our fantasies of security? Or do we open our eyes and ears and understand that their are stories beneath the news stories? Pick up a newspaper and read a major headline story but know in the back of your mind that it's not entirely true.
Look at the ridiculous propaganda that Iraq publishes! Look at the Moscow Theater and the gassing of innocent hostages by the Russian government. Look at the assasination of the American diplomat in Jordan. Come on who believes that wasn't a hit? Who believes that he wasn't working for someone other than a US-AID organization? Look at the Iran Contra fiasco. Look at the super secret stealth planes that were developed over 10 years ago and only recently announced to the public.
Every day, hour, and minute our governments wage a secret war against all other governments and terrorist organizations. I personally have a great deal of respect for those that pursue this profession as they are doing their best to protect us and our way of life.
Knowledge is power. Thoughts can move mountains. Beliefs can be dangerous. Responsibility over dangerous thoughts is important. Hatred and fear is infectious.
I am actually surprised we haven't become extinct yet. The fate of the world is in the hands of very few people. Fortunately, they have managed to keep us from self destructing. Let's pray that we don't keep going down these dangerous roads.
It would not take much to end it all. A simple human mistake would be all it would take. America was two hours away from total worldwide nuclear destruction over the Cuba missile crisis. It was a different world back then, but it's even more dangerous now than it was then.
Security is a complete illusion. Nothing more than a warm touchie feely comfort. Think those armed guards in the airports were there for anything other than making you feel safe? Remember the nut who waltzed right up to the Israeli ticket counter and blew a few people away? He was outside the security checkpoint. Try telling those that died that they were safe and secure.
What about the sniper? That could happen anywhere, anytime. If it had been a coordinated effort by those trained to do so; it would have been much much worse.
All this while idiotic protestors parade around against a war with Iraq. Iraq is a very dangerous country. The US government is not willing to tell anyone what it knows about Iraq. It cannot reveal certain information for security purposes. It might reveal more than it can afford to reveal. The government has released secret information to the senate, hence the decision giving the President authority to strike Iraq. This was fought long and hard by the Democrats then all of a sudden they side with the President. I suspect they have confirmed terrorist ties. I suspect they already have nuclear weapons. I believe they would actually use them.
Anyone who thinks Iraq can be safely left to it's own devices is seriously not thinking about reality.