Slashdot Mirror
Distributed Computing for Tracking Net Problems?
Osrin asks: "A software firewall package that came with a recent computer purchase is using a site called MyNetWatchman to track, catalog and escalate firewall incidents back to ISPs. I was wondering what Slashdot readers think of this type of solution and which other Internet problems it would lend itself to helping resolve?"
The internet is too saturated with greed to allow any kind of distibuted application viable on the internet.
As soon as any type of app becomes widely used enough to make it worth while it is either bought up and ruined by any number of corporations or sued and shutdown for some kind of obscure copyright violation in order to allow for a bigger and better solution from the copyright holder which will inturn be so ridden with spyware that it will never get used.
Not that I am a pessimist or anything...
All valid points, but the bulk of the worm infestations out there aren't spoofing becuase then they can't spread the infection. Given the number of ip addresses that mynetwatchman.com or dshield.org has reporting to them and the fact that they both require independent reports from multiple sources on ports with known exploits before making any type of report, the overwhelming majority of those reports are going to be for infected machines.
track down someone who releases an exploit.
Really, this is more the case of "track somebody who releases a virus using an exploit." The problem with this is that crackers can and often will seed the virus through more conventional methods (kazaa, hijacked email, etc), and allow others to infect themselves and thus continue on with the trend.