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Broadband Access Leading to Internet Breakdown?
"Spam, adware, worms and viruses are now able to propagate much faster than ever before. Worms are also growing bigger, more advanced, as it's possible to transfer more viral code in less time. It's as if slow dial-up lines acted as a kind of immune system that prevented effective propagation of worms and made DDoS attacks so much less significant.
I'm not only worried about viruses and spam levels. Part of the reason the MPAA and RIAA are taking such an interest in Internet activity is that file sharing has become so much easier with the availability of broadband, and as usual there are murmerings of regulation. Before the broadband revolution, the involvement of the MPAA and RIAA in Internet affairs was small, and their argument was less convincing.
As broadband grows, will regulation become necessary not just to prevent illegal distribution of copyrighted material but more likely to protect Internet users from themselves (we're already seeing ISPs adding spam e-mail filtering to their default services, for example)? Will the Internet fall in popularity as it becomes more and more frustrating and dangerous to use, or will we simply see a massive improvement in coding practices and more secure software?"
Broadband. What's it all about? Is it good, or is it whack?
Obviously, the time to distribute fixed and patches goes down as well. As does the ability to spread the word about things going around... I see the "always on" thing as more of a security risk than the higher speed, definately.
replacing it with NEW Folger's Crystals! (lets see if they notice the difference)
Here come the broadband jokes
The web is in danger of nothing. More importantly, the Internet is more important to commerce than ever before.
Unless a large, physical attack on the wires carrying all this data occurs, everything is pretty much A-OK.
I have been pwned because my
I suppose it depends on how you define the current freedom. I don't believe that it is going to lead to increased censorship. I don't believe it is going to lead to increased tracking or monitoring (although certainly other things, like the recent FBI/DOJ request for increased wiretapping ability may do just that).
I think that it will lead to increased filtering on the ISP side of things. More ISPs will be using Spam Assasin and similar programs behind the scenes. Undoubtedly, some legitimate e-mails will be caught by these SPAM traps, and the end-user might not have access to them.
Personally, since Dartmouth College starting running virus scanners and SPAM filters and the like, I constantly get e-mails where the "suspicious" file was automatically removed, and although most of those removals were viruses, I also lose legitimate files that are sent to me. As an end-user, I don't have access to change the settings or tell the system that a file is, in fact, OK. Instead, I have to e-mail the person back and ask them to resend the file to my AOL account.
I suspect that as more people use cable and DSL and the malware increases, this behind-the-scene tinkering will increase.
A serious blow to current freedoms on the Internet? I'm not sure. A pain in the ass? Absolutely.
99% of the people you ask would say not having broadband would be the biggest blow to their freedom on the internet... unfortunately we have to take the good with the bad, or start kicking people off the net...
Come on - the virus and worm anaology is a great one to make lots of ... but they aren't evolving under Darwinian survival of then fitest .... if anything it's more of a creationist sort of thing with rival gods throwing their latest creations into the world to battle it out with nature (ie the rest of us who provide the medium for them to live in) and each other
I need to verify this, but it appears that users with a very low uid can move their post above other posts. Mods then go through and mod comments below this upgraded comment that say something similar as Redundant. This causes this low uid person to appear as if they thought of the idea and get the visibility and mod points for it, but in fact THEY STOLE THE COMMENT! Has anyone else found this to be the case?
There is also a group of idiot mods running over the threads modding anything they dont understand as Troll. There have been some very intelligent comments recently that have been modded as Troll, purely because the mods either didnt get the joke, or the post does not follow the slashbot groupthink.
How many others have been experiencing the above mod abuses recently?
Imminent death of net predicted.
My amazing wife - Artist, Author, Philosopher - Laurie M
While unix boxes went through 25 years (since ARPA contracted UCBerkeley to make this "TCP" thingy) of evolution on networks that were, in retrospect, pretty safe.
The Morris Worm in '88 woke a lot of us up, but we've known for decades about "doors" and "locks" and such.
Windows is/was/and will be a consumer operating systems whose main impetus is features to push sales. Security hasn't appeared to be on their radar screen except as a check box ("did you think about security?" Um, yeah. "Good enough for us. Ship it").
I'm getting hammered by spam and worms and EVERYTIME I nmap back to the sender (okay 0.001% of senders, randomly chosen as I get pissed off), it's a windows box.
I love broadband.
I love VOIP to mom and video and streaming stuff to relatives (all legal)
I hate the bad neighbors running windows. The metaphorical slaughterhouse next door.
Email is one of the biggest threat vectors.
When email gets fixed (through authenticated access), the worms and virii will need to find a new way to spread.
This is in addition to the more obivous effect of cutting down the overall flow of spam.
there are 3 kinds of people:
* those who can count
* those who can't
Wasn't IPv6, combined with proper filtering supposed to curb these problems?
Alot of the blame falls on the ISP, they helped turn the Internet into a always-on appliance, now they have to make it robust.
Why does my ISP allow packets off my network that obviously don't originate from it? Is it considered a feature to allow DoS attacks? Why is port 25 open by default? Why isn't NetBIOS closed by default? Where is the IPv6 testbed that my ISP was supposed to have had 3 years ago?
Granted, the average Joe User can be an idiot, but part of the ISP's job is to make the Internet more idiot-proof.
By NostrabertusCoward:
Plague...
Ceci n'est pas une signature
How could you make a case to go back to dial-up? How about ditching your phone and just using snail mail? I have difficulty seeing how faster communication is ever bad. Not perfect, certainly, and the flaws need work, but the the advantages far outweigh the disadvantages.
...And every little old lady that comes in and purchases a DSL circuit for email makes me cringe.
All I can think is that she's just another virus infection waiting to happen on my network.
For some, it's senseless and stupid to have a broadband connection. I mean, my bread and butter requires that people DO have a DSL circuit, but there's no sense of responsibility with their internet connection.
People bitch all the time about spam, and how to get rid of it. That same person comes in and has a SMTP relay cleaned off their system a month later. They can complain about it, but they don't realize they're part of the problem as well.
Then there are those that come in and tell me to my face "Bah, I don't care if I have a virus, it just makes things a little slower." Those people piss me off the most. Those same people get pissed when I shut their connections off because they're sending out 20 messages/second, drowing their outbound pipe.
I swear. Sometimes I think owning a computer should require a license.
Can you ping me now? Gooood! | Manhappenin.Net - Things to do
I work at a local mom and pop computer store, and it seems like somewhere around half of all PCs brought in with problems stem from broadband used improperly.
/. aside) can't deal with it. They destroy the usuability of their PCs with it.
We had one guy come in, who had always-on Comcast cable, the same provider I use myself. He had bought a PC from us roughly 2 weeks before, and was hell bent that the "piece of shit" we sold him was to blame. Of course, no antivirus, no firewall, AOL for broadband added...so much spyware. That AdAware count was, I kid you not, 3,250 or so.
As a person who has to deal with people like this quite often, it's not hard for me to see the side of an ISP who would LIKE to impose restrictions. There is also part of me who wouldn't be against it. As much as I would like unfettered access, I know most people (those on
So I have mixed feelings on all this. What would I like to see? You have no fetters, at first. Then, you start acting as a spam relay or something, you get restrictions (I know, this happens, and I applaud for it). You act as a waypoint to spread viri and trojans, cut back another notch. And so on. This should all be spelled out in the license agreement, but I think it's nearing necessary.
Internet usage is not a RIGHT. It's a PRIVILEDGE. And it's one you should have to be responsible to keep.
Those who change will survive. E.g. learn to patch your system, avoid insecure behaviour and tighten up your network [e.g. firewall, NAT, etc...].
Those who don't will find their computer experience horrible and "die off" as far as the market is concerned.
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
Like most things, it depends.
If worms, virii, spam, etc. don't become more damaging than they are now, the status qou will be maintained.
If, on the other hand, bad guy capabilities increase until someone does something that takes lives and/or billions of dollars, then I think we'll see legislation to deal with it seriously.
Don't forget, too, that if the internet becomes too damn annoying or risky to use, people will stop using it. Seems to me that's a more likely way that my internet freedom will be restricted.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
No, it'll only wreck it for people who use Windows [for now at least]. I am glad to see that ISPs are starting to just cut off people who are displaying obvious signs of virus/trojan behavior.
I just hope the media is smart enough to look at this as the symptoms of bad software instead of a problem on its own.
am going to write that lame joke you thought I would.
Instead i would like to say that the Internet is not a medium that should be regulated or cencored.
If the dumb users are getting hurt by its wildness, that same darwinism should do its work.
And if we will see more secure software? Dont hold your breath.
The system had the verbosity of HTML combined with all the readability of compiled assembly viewed as bitmap images
I don't know about you all, but if you have an open node in the net you WILL be owned on 56K or broadband. The virus might -spread- faster, but it won't destabilize the long term growth of the net.
You'll be surprised at how fast ISP's implement manditory transparent virus/worm filering if the problem ever reaches the levels that you're implying. 2/4 ISP's that I've dealt with filtered back orifice without notifying customers.
Question:
Would anyone mind spending $2/month extra for an ISP to implement manditory WORM/Virus filters? If you want to play with them, use your LAN! This would solve all the worlds hunger problems!!!
Bye!
Just load Windows XP and Office onto a Pentium 2 with 64mb of RAM - that'll slow those dang worms to a halt if not the PC itself.
Potentially the most useful Windows box ever built.
You are missing the point.
Look at what is causing all of these outbreaks. Windows/Windows users.
If there were no windows users, none of the current virus epidemics would be a problem.
You think that virus's on another mainstream OS would take over? Doubtful.
Consider the distribution of OS's left (-windows): you get a melange of flavors. Virus writers would have to be far more sophisticated to hijack that number of dissimilar systems with one set of code.
Starfish by Peter Watts, ISBN: 0812575857
and its sequel
Maelstrom by Peter Watts, ISBN: 0812566793
The second book focuses more on the viral evolution but they are both good books overall
Come on - the virus and worm analogy is a great one to make lots of points ... but they aren't evolving under Darwinian survival of then fittest .... if anything it's more of a creationist sort of thing with rival gods throwing their latest creations into the world to battle it out with nature (ie the rest of us who provide the medium for them to live in) and each other
I still find it mystifying that any ISP would allow/encourage users to directly connect completely unprotected machines to a high-speed internet connection.
Sure, Windows could be better in terms of security, but that wouldn't even be a problem if all those insecure services were behind (even a minimal) firewall.
-Mark
(My DSL account came with a "free" firewall-enabled router)
I've used broadband for almost two years now, and I've loved it. I've never had a virus ever since I used it, and I hope it stays that way.
Hmm, maybe I forgot to mention I'm using Linux...
Well, as long as his coding slaves continue to release patches for unexploited exploits, I think those of us that work in the wierd world of windows server support will continue to have jobs. Irregardless of how big the worms get. Broadband is happening, metropolitan wireless networks are becoming a reality, and society almost completely shuts down if the internet stops responding. We're already driving down the road and I don't see too many off-ramps to save us from complete immersion.
One virus vector is plain old portscanning......
But you can't portscan 340282366920938463463374607431768211456 possible addresses very fast.
But IPv6 is a ways off, yet.
What we will see is an emergence of firewalls, etc, that make things more difficult for spam and viruses.
And my guess is that the backbones will also grow, as there is a lot of dark fibre left over from the internet boom. And for the RIAA, I think the genie is out of the bottle. Even mailing disks around would perpetuate it.
Fellowship 9/11
...when your evil worm is 12k in size... Not like it takes that much longer for it to transfer on dial-up...
The only possible diffrence is the permanence of the connection but that is becoming rather inevitable anyways.
A digital divide is probably more likely, as most people on broadband are accessing fuller multi-media experiences while poor souls have to avoid big-combo sites.
I think from the history of technology advancement, things always get bigger, better, faster, strong etc, and they usually don't break themselves down in the process.
Take our transportation for example, when the gravel roads got too crowded, we paved them, then widened them, then built highway motorway causeway, then we moved to train, light-rail, bullettrain.
At first we only tried to travel a short distance if you had to do it by foot, when we have cars, we want to travel further and eventually it is too far for cars, and we move to flights etc etc.
The cycle just keeps going.
Rock that crushes, Paper & Scissors that don't matter.
The problem is the transformation of most nodes of the Internet from peers to clients. That's what's going on with broadband; they lure you to the service with speed and reliability then after you're in they let you know you can't run any services and they're putting a mandatory (and poorly-run) spam filter on your incoming mail.
You're no longer part of the network. You're only a consumer and spectator. Spam is bad but RBLs like SPEWS and the admins that force them on their users can be worse. There used to be a time when you could hook into the Internet and go pretty much anywhere you wanted to go; today everybody wants to lock you down and force you to pay for things you once enjoyed for nothing or move to a different server because of some political battle over spam. When people like John Gilmore get screwed for running a mailserver, or a website like Something Awful has its business operations hampered, I can see the writing on the wall.
We need to get back to the days of having Internet access being a utility, much like electricity or water, where one could hook in and use it any way one will. The looming threat is control, lockdown, and homogenization that promises to render this medium as stale as commercial radio.
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
I have mediacom cable internet. Quite fast but if DSL was here, I'd consider taking it. Why? because mediacom does not allow servers.
Reading through thier various offers is interesting. Not only do they not want home users to run servers, but they even want to limit servers to certain business users, too.
In my opinion, this is going to lead to less people offering content on the web, as the bandwidth becomes more restrictive, and your choices decrease down to a few broadband options.This is in direct contrast to the mid-90's promise of the net where it was seen that anyone would be able to put up any thing.
I feel very sad, myself: I pay boupcoup bucks for a good connection (at least, compared to dialup) but I can't do jack shit with it (at least I can't do 2/3rds of what any healthy geek would want). Barely seems worth it.
I just drove up and playing on the radio in my car was an NPR commentary on "spyware" and the people trying to get legislation against it, well, whatever happened to personal responsibility? It isn't broadband that's the problem nor is it virus creators or spyware schleps it's the end user and the enormous ignorance of said user.
The Inet and your computer are not as simple as TV but that appears to be what the common user thinks it should be.
Until you address the actual problem (the user) the only thing we will get from legislation and laws is bigger, more intrusive government.
I would rather see people forced to get a "computer license" than create any more laws around the Inet and computer because we may just lose the last sanctuary of free speech.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
Yes. We should all go back to 300 baud modems. /. thread by tomorrow.
You should be able to download this whole
The problems that face the Internet are as follows. Illegal music, movies, software, and books. Also, the US gov wants to dip into the online sales revenue through taxation. MS, wants to charge e-mail with a small fee...which will quickly add-up for corporate America.
Solutions? None. I hate to sound cynical, but just look to our past. Once the freedom of anarchy directly affects our economy in a negative way, regulation WILL soon follow. The only debate at this point is how soon and how hard will the Internet be regulated.
Life is not for the lazy.
If your messages are encrypted, then you don't have to worry about automated programs kicking them for their content or attachments. That will be up to the decrypting party. I pity the ISP that starts blocking messages because they are encrypted.
Learn how to cryptographically sign your mail on Mac OS X 10.3
It is time for the yearly "The Internet is Doomed! Doooooooomed!" postings and kook theories.
> Will the Internet fall in popularity as it becomes
> more and more frustrating and dangerous to use, or
> will we simply see a massive improvement in coding
> practices and more secure software?"
It will become more frustrating for us, but less dangerous to those to whom it's just a type of television. This will come about not through a massive improvement in coding practices and more secure software but through a massive increase in regulation and control. The cable companies will control what you see on the Net the way they control what you see on cable tv.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
No, because with a cable modem connection I can order a Powerbook faster than ever.
Uhhh. Aolers would still make the same mistakes if they were all on unix systems...
If we were all running on dial up the viruses would still spread nearly as fast.
What has doomed the internet is the monopoly over software that makes one vulnerability in the dominant software to take down almost everyone on the internet.
If the population was using an even mix of different email clients, browsers, and operating systems we would all be much safer.
What I think really accelerates virus distribution are MS Exchange workgroup email servers. Those viruses go through contact lists that can contains hundreds of thousands of emails in seconds! That's where viruses really multiply.
I don't understand why no one puts anti virus software on their email servers. I have several email addresses and the only one that I DON'T pay for (a family run server) is the only one that has server side anti-virus and it works great. Why can't ISPs and large corporations do the same? Have they not seen how viruses can cripple networks?
At the college I attend (and work at) they push down a script on the domain that makes everyone computer in the school run this annoying virus specific clean up tool from Norton everytime a new virus makes its run around the internet. This is run before the logon screen so it can make the computer take 5-10 minutes longer to boot up! That's simply ridiculous.
Maybe it isn't the greater use of broadband, but the great use of products and actions that promote the spread of virii and worms.
Derek Greene
The downfall of the Internet will occur only in an apocolyptic scenerio such as a nuclear holocaust or an asteroid striking Earth. And groups like the RIAA and MPAA are like the government. They refuse to admit one thing: They are ultimately powerless to stop what goes over the wires. Abolition of anything can easily create a counteracting effect. As far as viruses, worms and spam are concerned, IPv4 leaves the door open to header forging and email address spoofing. IPv6 is supposed to stop that. But last the I checked, its code wasn't thoroughly tested and it could take years to implement. High speed connections do make you more vulnerable to infections IF you don't secure your system. Simply hooking into the Internet without protection obviously can lead to disaster. But Windows XP's firewalling is a sign of things to come. Firewalls and virus scanners will be so common that for anyone not to have them would be a shock.
Well ... Maybe the tera-horde of worms rampaging the internet will lead to emergence and evolution ; worms could evolve due to communications errors.
It could lead to something interresting, even if it's damn boring and, well, quite ugly in a "read-your-snort-logs" sense...
I sense much beer in you. Beer leads to intoxication, intoxication leads to hangover. Hangover leads to sobering.
Say a little more.
The best defense against viruses is a healthy immune system, and an organism gains a healthy immune system through exposure to germs and viruses.
The current "epidemic" of viruses serves only to strengthen the immune systems various groups are developing to regulate the wider ecosystem - the net.
There will always be change, and one of the drivers of change is chaos.
"If you think nobody cares if you're alive, try missing a couple of car payments." Earl Wilson
like Bob Metcalfe did when he predicted "gigalapses" of the internet?
sulli
RTFJ.
I think the proliferation of broadband has helped the internet become a more valuable tool for the average 2.5-kids-having-explorer-driving-all-American-fami ly, which has caused it to be a greater part of all our lives. As such, it is now on the radar for the type of people who are threatened by anything beyond their control.
The more we become dependent on the internet, the more interest there will be in regulating it. The level of freedom, possibility, and power that the internet affords to the average person is simply unprecedented. Freedom of the press belongs to those who own a press. With the advent of the internet, the average soccer-mom now has a press that can publish to the entire world for pennies.
Attempts to regulate and lock-down the net are inevitable. It is the nature of those who seek power for themselves to deny and control the power afforded to others.
The possibility of always-on connections spewing a constant stream of malware and sludge is just an excuse. The proliferation of broadband is dangerous because it put the issue on the map and a very high level of power in the hands of the people.
The Dalai Llama
Citizen of a nation where freedom of speech, bought with the blood of heroes, is used to spread pr0n and reality TV shows.
My sig could be your sig!
"No, but the proliferation of crappy Microsoft software will. In fact it has already."
Only at slashdot would something like this get modded as insightful. A random statement against Microsoft that is untrue and backed up by no facts or information. The majority of Windows users use Windows as there choice, they don't want to use a Mac, and are not interested in Linux. Furthermore, if you feel that you can write better software go do it and you will make a lot of money. This poster is just another angry Slashdot reader that is looking for something to insult MS about. I don't use Microsoft, I use Linux, but some of these anti-MS posts are ridiculous. Just another user mad at MS who does not have the skill or the know how to make anything better.
> 'After noting the current surge in Internet worms and the so-called Darwinist evolution of these things into more and more powerful incarnations, '
Evolution of life forms according to Darwinistic theories implies selection of stronger lifeforms via random mutation. There is nothing random about the scum who write this malware. They use proactive intelligence (the obvious reason that Evolution can't work when c.f. complexity of biological life (eg. ireducible complexity))
The internet is really a true market economy. If the rewards outweigh the penalties, it will continue to be used. If it costs spammers more to send email than they make out of it, most of them will stop. The internet offers so much in the way of information, growth will never stop, rather we will use our proactive intelligence to stop the problems now happening.
Just put a clause in the contract. If a PC is put onto the network without antivirus and firewall and it gets infected (thus becoming a threat to the ISP), the account is immediately terminated without right of appeal.... in theory ISPs could already do this (as infected machines are often spam vectors and spamming already has such penalties) but an explicit contract stops them saying they didn't know.
Publicise it... make sure that the ordinary users are given every chance to comply (a CD that automatically installs Norton should do it), and that's 90% of the problem solved.
If it wasn't for cheap and noisy PC's which can't be left on because the racket they emit is disturbing to their owners, this could become an epidemic.
"If you think nobody cares if you're alive, try missing a couple of car payments." Earl Wilson
"No, but the proliferation of crappy Microsoft software will. In fact it has already."
How is this in anyway insightful? Another random comment against MS that is backed up by no proof. Should be marked -1 Troll.
Pull the plug now! We can't let Skynet take over.
Often on talk radio I hear them discussing 'controversial' issues like how the internet is bad because of all the "porn sites popping up out of nowhere" and how it - the internet - needs to be heavily regulated. FFS. The problem is not the road; the problem is that shitty car that you're driving!
We have worm sign the likes of which not even God has seen!
Irregardless is not a word.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
for letting short sighted profit centric corporations organize the broadband rollout. This is the perfect example of why an unrestricted free market is not a good thing. Now we will be wasting valuable time and resources to fixing a fuck up that should not have happened in the first place. Support a national effort to use our tax money (give less to private corporations and more to improving everyones life), to lay a 100MB backbone to every house.
I wonder: will the proliferation of broadband Internet access deal a serious blow to current freedoms on the Internet?
Governments will.
And I was like "Whatever"
Make a standard, fairly simple test that you must pass before you are allowed onto the internet. This test only needs about 3 questions. First, can you turn on the computer by yourself. Secondly, can you setup and or access e-mail by yourself. Thirdly, when you set up your e-mail, you should immediately e-mail the licensing agency. They should respond with an e-mail that completely looks like a virus. If you open the program attached, you fail. This program should promptly erase your hard drive so you will pose less of a threat.
If I drive fast enough at the red light, it'll appear green.
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/03/18/182525 2&mode=thread&tid=103&tid=126&tid=95&tid=9 9
Not to make you feel like an IDIOT and whomever made this go on the main page... MAYBE ITS THAT MORE PEOPLE THAN EVER ARE USING THE FARKING INTENRET!
With more broadband use, you will see ISP costs go up and service reliability go down as backbones require upgrading. You will see site hosting costs increase as they face more demand, too. I also can't help but wonder how many coffee shop WAPs will be next to worthless in a few years if the owners aren't diligent about upgrading regularly.
Eventually, of course, the free market and Darwin will take care if these issues. Technical improvements will drop the cost of bandwidth and the bottlenecks will be upgraded one at a time. Those that fail to will find themselves going under (or, for our coffee shop owner, simply getting out of the WAP business). I figure everything will eventually work itself out, but it is going to be a very bumpy road getting there.
"Prepare for the worst - hope for the best."
who cares?
about the time AOL came to be letting loose a flood of morons.
I blame AOL.
didn't read article.... didn't understand story.... don't grasp implications... I"LL BASH MICROSOFT INSTEAD!!
Think nothing is impossible? Try slamming a revolving door.
Look at all the big worms we've had so far this year. They haven't been exploits of security holes, they've all been worms that people receive in their e-mail and then double click on.
Sure with broadband their double clicking takes action faster, but I don't really think that's the problem. The problem is that there are so many more people online now than there was two years ago, and a large chunk of them do not have the knowledge to deal with viruses in their email. Double click now, worry later.
People do NOT pay attention to what they are opening, I do IT for a small business, and we haven't had any machines infected yet. All of the viruses are caught at the mail server and replaced with a text attachment stating "THERE WAS A VIRUS ATTACHED BUT IT HAS BEEN REMOVED BY THE VIRUS SCANNER.TXT" and the same people day after day will forward me the message or call me on the phone and ask if the message is a virus.
Yeah, I know. Everyone has their own fix for the problem, but I really think these steps would take care of most of it.
1. Free firewall software from an ISP for all Windows boxes. I really don't think ZoneLabs would charge too much for an ISP to distribute the free version of ZoneAlarm. Ditto that for AdAware or Spybot S&D.
2. Free virus-scanning of all email. Don't scan for spam and forward through all virus-stripped email just in case it contains important information. I know, most viruses are ONLY viruses, but you never know what may come later.
3. Have ISPs monitor port 25. If traffic is seen, test it for an open relay. This could be part of the contract the customer would sign. If it's an open relay, block it and tell the customer to clean up the machine if they want it open.
4. Once a new major virus such as MSBlast hits, monitor for it's traffic and block appropriately or take them offline until it's fixed. Of course the virtual network with cleaning tools is a good idea, also.
If this doesn't happen (and I don't expect it to) people with computers HAVE to learn that running a computer hooked up to the Internet is a responsibility. If they can't learn how to manage it properly, they should hire someone to do it. You have to maintain your car and people don't complain too much about it. If they do, people may feel sorry for them, but that's as much slack as they get. Don't fix it? Don't drive.
But why is the rum gone?
I really cannot get behind this particular view.
Of course I have to agree that many factors are leading to ever-increasing severity of the situation. I blame the following problems:
* A growing monoculture of peers on the internet
* A growing increase of broadband availability
* A growing commercial interest in the success of spam
* A growing ease of use in implementing malware solutions (see monoculture and availability matters)
I feel that there is a combination of problems that prevent an effective solution. First, law enforcement is still largely uneducated about how to handle these problems. The experts in the field are capable but there are too few so they are only able to go after the big fish.
Another, excusing the lack of manpower, is the lack of criminal law in place. Lawmakers are reluctant to write much of these offenses up as criminal because being exact in interpretation is probably perceived as difficult. Further, they run risk of offending commercial entities because many of the successful businesses deploy techniques that are on questionable moral ground and it would be difficult to word-in exemptions to criminal code based on "established commercial interests."
So just as anti-spam law was written "weak" in order to avoid harming larger commercial interests, I feel that cyber-crime laws that would address trojan and viral malware authors are similarly "protected" to prevent harming commercial software interests who write backdoors, allow vulnerabilities or otherwise violate privacy and "call home" with information about the user without their consent.
Awareness will have to grow before progress can be made. People will have to understand that they are using a "crescent wrench" that does more than tighten nuts, screws and bolts... they also do things they don't want to happen as well and are blissfully unaware.
In my opinion, disclosure of such features should be made available to all of the public whether or not the public chooses to learn about it and it should be free. In much the same way that automotive and other product recalls are out there, the same should be available for software.
Software is not a magic box that no one understands -- people wrote it... (for now) and so there are no accidents or "natural phenomena" that occur with it.
The problem is there is too much incentive to continue as things are regardless of the larger effects... which is the destruction of the internet.
...is to simply make the broadband user liable for actions taken using their connection, whether they had knowledge or not.
If Joe Lusers who signed up for cable internet and don't bother to patch their systems or run firewalls become spam relays and DDoS zombies they should be held liable. It's Mr. Luser's responsibility to figure out who was using his connection for nefarious purposes.
Get some news coverage about families that got judgements against them for $10,000 for spamming and you'll see progress in this area because then people will give a shit about this. From their perspective, it doesn't hurt them to be a spam or DDoS zombie, so they've no incentive whatsoever to not be a spam/DDoS zombie.
Now, what will the consequence of this be? When faced with risk, there are a few options:
As far as I'm concerned, all four of those options are equally good and effective.
Please, more powerful tools, in the hands of people who know how to use them, lead to greater productivity, not pandemonium. Did the evolution of muzzle-loader muskets into M-16's spark a global surge in violence? D'oh, bad example...okay, the growth of axes into chainsaws helped mankind...deforest our planet at an astonishing rate. There must be a good example here somewhere. Single-prop airplanes into 737's...lead to air and noise pollution. Well, you see where I'm going with this. More powerful tech is only bad if someone uses it in a bad way...which someone always does.
"In a 32-bit world, you're a 2-bit user. You've got your own newsgroup, alt.total.loser." -Weird Al
There is conference related to this subject, checkout : http://www.pfir.org/meltdown People For Internet Responsibility (PFIR) is pleased to preliminarily announce an "emergency" conference aimed at preventing the "meltdown" of the Internet -- the risks of imminent disruption, degradation, unfair manipulation, and other negative impacts on critical Internet services and systems in ways that will have a profound impact on the Net and its users around the world.
Solve those two problems, and trouble will decline to a manageable level.
As a temporary measure, I suggest that a command be added to the POP protocol to say "I want to receive MIME e-mail." The default is "off". ISPs should be required to implement this on pain of being considered grossly negligent. Clients that ask for MIME e-mail must be virus-resistant, on pain of being considered grossly negligent. All old systems thus revert to text E-mail during the transition.
Communes work, communist countries don't. Private restrooms are cleaner than public ones, even the private restrooms of the people who mess up the public ones are cleaner. The honor system works in small communities and villages, but big cities overflow with crime regardless of penalties.
Whenever you open something to the public you ruin it. More specifically a couple people out of 100 ruin it. The internet magnifies this by allowing the assholes to script themselves, like a mirror image spell in Baldur's Gate.
as long as there are no follow up questions... no.
*ducks*
"As bandwidth costs become cheaper and more people adopt cable or DSL over standard dial-up connections,"
Where is this happening? Cable connection runs in the $40-$50/month range right now. A couple of years ago you could get them for about $35 in my area.
There really doesn't seem to be any price pressures on broadband access yet. Most places have either DSL or Cable. Some places have both. Neither the telcos (who do DSL) nor the Cable cos seem inclined to compete on price yet. Maybe when wireless broadband or broadband over powerlines become more common you'll start to see some competition.
After noting the current surge in Internet worms and the so-called Darwinist evolution of these things into more and more powerful incarnations,
It's not exactly Darwinian evolution. These things don't mutate on their own, people change them.
And yet you are so bold in your opinion that you feel the need to post as an AC.
Bill Gurley made a case 4 years ago that still reads well today. regarding. He predicts the effects of not only broadbandization but other Moore's Law consequences on music sharing.
t .util.print
http://news.com.com/2102-1071_3-281302.html?tag=s
Can you say "Clipper chip"?
Unfortunately, governments (and especially ours) aren't exactly known for learning their lesson the first time around. This is likely a battle we'll have to fight again, and soon.
-----Chaz
More bandwidth is good because then bad germs will kill more weak hosts faster.
ISPs that can't be bothered to filter out the viruses are the primary cause of all this damage.
Today, almost all viruses are weapons to attack home PCs, installing spambots. If the ISPs had even been marginally responsible as these epidemics started, rather than fostering the spread of ever-more-dangerous virii, today's problems would be several orders of magnitude less than they are.
That has nothing to do with broadband per se. It has to do with trying to make a buck by externalizing all costs ... changing the Internet from a place where
organizations were responsible, to one where irresponsibility
became the norm.
There are lots of real-world examples of people being held responsible for their actions. You can't just go screwing people to give them AIDS, for example. Or firing guns into crowds. And there are plenty of places where littering gives reasonable fines (hundreds of dollars).
I always laugh at this talk of porn sites popping out of no where bullshit. i would argue 99.9% of people claiming this have either been looking for porn and got busted or are searching warez sites. the other .01% have made an unfortunate typo in their URL.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
And have you ever called into one of those programs to suggest that the people doing the complaining try installing Mozilla and turn on popup blocking? If you were really clever, you could even give a quick rundown of how to do this on the air. Think how far that one phone call could go in solving this problem.
-----Chaz
Isn't that what this is all about? The noobs don't know how to swim, but they are hell bent on jumping into the deep end.
/. article asking questions for Mike Godwin about legal issues on the web. Let's face it, and check me here, but stupid is still free as best I know. Sadly, it is the best some can afford.
I have moderated some large message boards, by way of an analogy. They always start off with a small group of people that get comfortable with the tone of voice, the technology involved, and they then set the trend for that one site. If the tone is right (i.e., inviting) tons of people start showing up. If you build it, they will come and all that. You'd think that would be a good thing, but it invariably leads to becoming "a victim of your own success".
You get people that have no idea what have gone on before, but show up and start demanding to be heard. Major soap box time. And God help 'em if they don't get taken seriously, or get criticized because they are reinventing the wheel or any of a number of other things.
This dovetails nicely with the
Is there a crackdown on surfing habits in the future? Maybe. On the whole, it probably wouldn't be a bad thing since most issues would be related to security type items (antivirus requirements, firewalling, OS patches, etc) as has been noted. Would things like this impact the "old timers"? Probably not, and the noobs wouldn't even know the difference anyway.
Remember, the question wasn't about freedom of speech, copyright issues, IP, etc., but the propagation of crap.
Broadband connection, analog connection, it doesn't matter. The abuses are the same (read "deranged indifference" as abuses). It's like the Austin Powers movie where the guy gets run over by a steam roller. The end result is the same, it just takes a lot longer than getting hit by a Porsche. The outcome is inevitable, in my mind. It is just a matter of how quickly we get there.
No, but the proliferation of crappy Microsoft software will. In fact it has already.
I find amuzing that I actually got moded down and got a whole slew of passionate responses about bashing Microsoft. Perhaps M$ has reached such a point where people are already tired of being dissatisfied and would prefer to just "let it be".
My statement is still true - the vast majority of all the problems we are having are due to problems with primarily Microsoft Outlook, as well as other Microsoft software.
There used to be days when virus writers used assembly. Now, anyone semi-profficient in visual basic can write a very destructive virus. And Microsoft is to blame for that. Nothing personal against them, but it is their fault, and that's a fact, sorry.
the Internet with a modem is NOT the same Internet as it is with high speed. many more things are happening for broadband users. relative to security and privacy spam and viruses top the list of importance and concern but this is one of a thousand lists of things a faster internet connection can do. the Internet roars on... stampedes, maybe?
"I wonder: will the proliferation of broadband Internet access deal a serious blow to current freedoms on the Internet?"
Nope. But it'll highlight the stupidity of the average user well enough....
I've found that most folks like to be told how to make their computers more secure and decrease their chances of infection/spyware...
I have made it standard practice to install 3 applications on all Windoze machines that I fix anything on...
1) Install Avast! Home Edition and set it to do automatic updates of both the Core Program and Virus Database. Because most people don't pay for Anti-Virus upgrades after their free trial version runs out...not to mention the fact that Avast! is better than Norton and most for-pay AV apps anyhow...
2) Install Spybot Search & Destroy and make sure that the primary user(s) see what the result of the initial scan is (shock value) with instructions on how to use the app...
3) Install FireFox (no link needed) with the follofing userContent.css...
If they still insist on using IE I will install Google Toolbar and enable popup blocking...
I then proceed to replace any spyware apps with free non-spyware apps (WeatherBug -> Weather Pulse, etc)
As for a firewall, I talked most into buying a wireless router (generally a cheap 802.11b router) to use as a firewall and future network upgrades. I don't think any windoze software firewalls are very good...IPTables is about the ONLY software firewall that I trust...
After doing this, I find that these systems stay fairly clean and have much fewer problems. Not to mention the owners of said machines tend to be much happier afterward.
IMHO we will evolve into one of two directions before that happens:
- Government sponsored RFID tracking everything we do through a world wide ID.
- A challenge based network were each individual says who can and can't access their information or send them information.
I personally opt for the later and have. I use regular email but it goes through a filter(si20.com). I can set the level to block only the worst offenders or block everyone but who is on my list.I hope people wake up before something really bad happens and the government is forced to do something. We all know what happens when the government interferes.
You say things that offend me and I can deal with it. Can you?
I also have an IPv6 tunnel to that remote (by 3k miles) box. Protocol 41/port25 is not filtered :)
The all new, shiny, "UhOh"'s (this decade) style CONSUMER internet is not the [D]ARPA-Net that some of us grew up with. Not even the "rough town" internet of the mid 90s to the late 90s.
No this is the network for those people who believe that one network of the Internet is the "intranet." Where even those that thought SMB and IPX were good ideas were considered "technical." (I remember the first time I deal with a Novell network, asking my friend the admin how to turn off the curses interface and get to the real command line. "No, that's it." I setup my Sun IPC to do print and file service and his box with PC-NFS and asked why they thought novell was worth $20k) (the IPC was fairly used at the time, but BSDi 1.0 was just out too, for less on them Pentium/33s).
The consumer net has people who need protection. Perhaps under the banner of "to help them" but just as important is to protect ME from them.
I long ago proposed that AOL, Compusa, Prodigy (the trailer park of the Internet) and those guys have OC48's between them and a 56k modem to the rest of us. Didn't happen and now those people are all around dumping sewage into our streams.
I'm about set to refuse mail that DIDN'T come from an IPv6 address and regress.
So filter port 25. The net is in crisis from the consumer FatPipe providers.
Motivate the vendors (MS, but also the Linux distros, Sun and everyone else to NOT COME OUT OF THE BOX WITH 20+ ports listening!!).
I clean up hacked Linux and Sun regularly. We need "echo" on for WHAT good reason? If Sun can't come up with a simple CLI tool to manage inetd.conf (it's a perl script), then they shouldn't be playing on the net.
Linux needs rpc's by default why?
99%* of linux user use packages built by strangers for what good reason? (at least with source, 1 of thousand of users can LOOK at mutt-1.4i.tar.gz that md5 checksums to:
a67bcdf1a1cd53d61ccd3ebf3993ba59
With a binary, it's a crapshoot.
The internet is a bad neighborhood and some folks need protecting and we need protecting from some folks. Just don't tell gramma that we're walling her IN, just 'splain that the wall is to keep the baddies OUT.)
--
Mr Cranky
(in my 22nd year of using this new fangled "network" thingy. Archie was good enough for me.)
* ok, I made up 99% but anyone have real numbers that frighten less?
And you know what.. I got modded to hell for it. After many years of always being right, I have come the the conclusion that everyone would be better off if they would just listen to me the first time.
Sure, Windows could be better in terms of security, but that wouldn't even be a problem if all those insecure services were behind (even a minimal) firewall.
Would be even less of a problem if Microsoft shipped those services turned off by default. Sure, the 1 in a million that need RPC services running (and don't know how to enable it) would suffer... it's pretty simple, really.
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
"Maybe I want to have port 25 open so I can run a mail server."
Which promptly gets rooted, and made into a servent of the dark side.
"Point is that I want to decide what is open and closed."
Everyone wants to be free. No one wants to take responsability for that freedom.
Broadband isn't the cause of vulnerabilities, it just exposes them. These are all problems that have already been there and never fixed. Will there be another virus that infect millions and millions of people? Sure, stoned and jerusalem did too and stoned required a floppy to be booted in a computer back in the day. People shouldn't run programs they get from the net without caution. That's what they said about BBSes 20 years ago.
Give it time, things will work themselves out. To be honest I'm far more worried and some of the more modern attacks that attack the fundamental trust models. There is a TTL attack where you can carefully craft packets with screwy TTL values and a 56K link can DoS a 3Mbit link, that's just exploiting the way the protocol is designed to work. Should attacks like that become really pervasive that is something that can cause damage.
I think the government needs a system to pre-screen Net users. If they aren't suspected of being idiots they could have a green flag attached to their packets which would allow the packets to route freely across the Internet. Those suspected of being idiots would have their packets flagged yellow, and would still be routable, but would be automatically scanned for viruses/spam and monitored for otherwise suspicious activity. The vast majority would be flagged red though and wouldn't be routed at all. Just an idea.
I work for a small ISP, and things are absolutely improving behind the scenes. Most old broadband network designs were not built with the present day in mind. It was, perhaps, shortsighted, but who saw this coming?
We're installing dedicated spam/virus filtering machines. We're changing our network drastically, going from a very simple network structure to one where every DSL bridge's ATM channel is carried up to a router doing Proxy-ARP, so we can cut out broadcast traffic and regulate traffic for every customer's connection (cutting down on both viruses spread via broadcast traffic as well as DoS attacks).
On top of that, we police the network to find users with viruses, then call them and, if they can't do it themselves, clean their PCs for free.
Things are definitely picking up on the ISP end. Now if only the customers would take a few steps...
You made an unqualified statement bashing Microsoft. You didn't provide reasoning, facts or even theories. Why are you so suprised that a short, stupid blanket statement was modded down?
Your statement was pure flamebait.
And Microsoft, while their security practices are abysmal, aren't the only ones to blame.
Dictionary.com on Economy
"Careful, thrifty management of resources, such as money, materials, or labor"
This is a general definition, it can be applied to the "economy" of a prehistoric tribe living in a village.
However, applying this definition to today's system seems a bit exagerated, especially for the "careful" part.
Our economy in the US is not an artifact. Our economy IS planed with an onjective goal in mind. That is, you trade labor, services, or good in exchange for the same of different value.
1) Planed ? I can't find a plan in what seems to be fractal patterns.
2) According to what you say, the goal of your economy (ours as well) is to maintain itself. Not anything else ; and not social progress, in any way.
If what you say were true, then by all intent, thievery would be acceptable as a natural form of economic evolution.
It is, as long as you don't get caught - survival of the fittest (the one able to steal without being caught), remember ?
I sense much beer in you. Beer leads to intoxication, intoxication leads to hangover. Hangover leads to sobering.
Giving people access to the internet is like giving everyone a gun. Sooner or later someone will steal the gun unless you take care of it and keep it hidden/protected.
.exes are evil in all forms (ever seen a proggy run that wasn't .exe and crash? :P ), why can't others do this.
Everyone seems to think they need some uber connection to get their 2.5 e-mails a day faster. They seem to think it's up to the ISP to block spam and any other problems they may present because "they pay for this".
It's like going "Oi police, protect my house 24 hours a day becaus eI help pay for you". We need to start letting these people lose their PCs, let us repair them and get rich and just point out to them that it's UP TO THEM and not the ISPs.
I've never had spam and only 1 virus in about 4 years of being online. Now if I can have a record like that without doing much but updating firewalls, virus scanners and knowing that
Then again most the people using e-mail can't even type without having to have someone read each key to them JUST incase they get it wrong..
--- [Insert intresting Sig here]
Why don't the editors delete page widening posts? This is not a free speech / censorship issue. Widening the page is not speech, its vandalism. Just because I browse at -1 and endure GNAA posts doesn't mean that I want to scroll across the page just to read an entire post. In fact, I think page widening tramples on free speech itself since it obscures other people's posts by making them harder to read.
High speed internet has increased the proliferation of virii, but you have to take the good and the bad. Cars have gotten faster since they were invented, and as such we've had more high speed crashes and fatilities. It's just something that's inherent to speeding up the process ... you speed EVERYTHING up, the good and the bad. And for the most part the good outweighs the bad.
Take freedoms? Yes, take some people's freedom to use Microsoft products.
Not only is dialup an "immune system" to worms (well, not really, it just slows things up a bit), it also gives you a fighting chance to get the hell out of here. On a cable modem, you're pretty much screwed because you get the image in the snap of a finger. :D
I think TwistedSpring is right on in asking this question. I'm always explaining what a firewall, spyware, or Anti-Virus software is. The internet has become commonplace, grandparents are using email, it's become another form of media.
But as it grows, there is also more risk. I think that educating the new users is mandatory. I oftentimes find myself saying, "it's not as safe as it was, but here's some sites to look at to protect your computer." The average joe looks to his 'geek buddy in the office' to point him in the right direction when his pc keeps shutting down because he's got the blaster worm. my speil of zonealarm, spybot, and norton is at least enough to keep them going. i honestly think that as more and more people are introduced to the web, the more it can grow.
granted, i'm tired of cleaning viruses and malware off of pc's, but maybe if i keep harping on computer protection, eventually joe sixpack will listen and when his buddy says his computer's acting strange, he'll say, 'do you have anti-virus software on it?'
"I'm not only worried about viruses and spam levels. Part of the reason the MPAA and RIAA are taking such an interest in Internet activity is that file sharing has become so much easier with the availability of broadband, and as usual there are murmerings of regulation. Before the broadband revolution, the involvement of the MPAA and RIAA in Internet affairs was small, and their argument was less convincing. "
If you're using the internet to violate copyright laws, that is not an exercise in freedom, but instead an exercise infringing on someone elses rights. The fact that you weren't caught before doesn't mean the internet is becoming less free. It means there is less anarchy on the internet.
Vote for Pedro
that people make excuses for everything. It's the interent (purposely miss pelled), it's get-t-t-ting too fast. If that's your attitude you deserve what's coming to you, biatch.
I know you are psychotic, but please make an effort.
"I appreciate your perspective, but I disagree. Intenet usage ought to be a RIGHT. Why? Because the guarantee of free speech in our constitution is meaningless if it does not entail an access to the communications media."
So by your logic, the newspaper has to print your manifesto? The TV station has to show your rants? The radio has to let your screed over the air?
You may have the right to speak, but no one is obligated to carry your message, or even listen to you. So the Internet isn't a right. Just as me having a telephone isn't a right.
Well there's solutions to some of these problems, but nobody would really want to implement them.
.exe to their entire adressbook via their ISP's mail server.
Let's talk about spam and adware: Outlaw it. Why is it proving to be so hard to kick congress off their fat lazy asses and make it easier for people to smack these bitches where it hurts, their wallets? Given what happened with the do not call list you'd think this would be a piece of cake. Why is adware even permitted to exist? You'd think with all the heightened security concern that methods of running unwanted code without a user's consent or knowledge of its installation would be a major issue.
Viruses/worms/trojans: Change the way email works. Step one, NO ATTATCHMENTS. Seriously, why the hell are we using email to shuttle files around? It was not designed for this. What alternative is there for people to share files? I dunno, maybe P2P? Or maybe personal web servers? But wait, that's bad, then broadband providers would have to allow upstream that isn't horribly crippled or god forbid minor webservers on their networks. Let's look at the advantages of sending a link to a file on your machine in an email versus attatching the file:
1. Reduced mail traffic. If your mail goes out to a 100 person list, and only 5 people care to check out the file, only the bandwidth for those 5 is used.
2. Traceable distribution path. We know where the file came from, even if it's malicious code, someone is accountable for hosting it. It's just slightly harder to infect a user's machine, start up a webserver unknowingly, host a file, and trojan a link into their emails than just spew an
Peer to peer copyright infringement: Face it, it's here, it's not going away. Either make what people want to watch and hear available when they want it for a price they won't balk at, or suffer. I mean how impractical is this? Itunes doesn't seem to be having any problems. Maybe it's not so much people are unwilling to pay for a movie or a CD as they are unwilling to go down to a store and get something overpriced or find out it's out of stock. Maybe it's easier to consume TV by watching exactly the episode you want of the show you like without having to plan your day around it. Not everything downloaded is even available for sale. People want it, but companies aren't supplying it, so they're going the less than legal route to get it. There will always be piracy for any medium, people taped CDs and the radio and copied VHS tapes. P2P is just making access to content easier. If there isn't enough legal content or the access isn't easy enough, guess what people will go to instead? I would rather pay what the average monthly cable bill is and be able to search for and download whatever TV episodes or movies I wanted to watch than pay it to have to wait for them to come on so I could watch them or record them. It's not about the money.
Introducing the new Occam Fusion! Now with sqrt(-1) fewer blades!
"We need to get back to the days of having Internet access being a utility, much like electricity or water, where one could hook in and use it any way one will. The looming threat is control, lockdown, and homogenization that promises to render this medium as stale as commercial radio."
The problem with your post is that it's harder to affect someone elses power or water, but if you could? Then you would suffer the consequences every bit as much as broadband is presently.
Also siteas going pay is the right of whomever produces the content. You may have gotten it free before, but that was with the permission of the producer, not some inate right.
And last you pine for the good old days, but in the good old days unless you payed for your own connection. Someone else had a measure of control over what you did. They may not have exercised it, but...
Let's take a look at your assumptions.
There is no such thing. Dialup just happens to be cheaper if you don't use the Net heavily, and to be universally available. There ain't anything standard about it.
Nor is broadband what people really need. Rid them of the actual dialing time delays, and they will live happily with 128Kbps or even 64Kbps. This would be somewhat cheaper, would make these users less interesting to be targetted by spammers, and would help webdesigner go slow with flash and fancy graphics.
So what we need is competition in the last mile Net connections, so that this bandwidth madness is checked.
Now, perhaps MS users should be required to have firewalls by default, and to give permission for ISPs to routinely check them for virii, spyware and the such? Perhaps partition all ISPs in MS Windows and the sane world, the MS Windows world being firewalled at the ISP so that MS Windows users can only do so much harm to their fellow sufferers?
Leandro Guimarães Faria Corcete DUTRA
DA, DBA, SysAdmin, Data Modeller
GNU Project, Debian GNU/Lin
Turning off connections and refusing to turn them on until the problem is fixed. If ISPs started doing this, people would start patching, geting anti-virus software and so on. Your average person doesn't care if they get infected since it doesn't affect them in ways they notice. Not having Internet, they'll notice and care about. What's more, they'll probably have to pay to have it fixed, either by taking it to a shop or buying software. This gives them even more incentive to prevent future occurances.
Of course that story was from 2 weeks ago so it's old news. This week the latest variant has no attachment at all. It's just HTML that exploits an IE bug that downloads the worm from the infected computer that sent the message.
This type of nonsense blows my mind. Why in God's name would anyone use this crap?!?!? I mean, I use Windows at work, but the first freaking thing I did when I got my new machine was download Thunderbird and remove all the Outlook shortcuts. Its a POS and should be banned.
So who do you suggest is to blame, if not Microsoft?
The article makes an assertion that proliferation of worms will negatively impact freedoms of the Internet. Microsoft created Outlook and Explorer, both of which can be made to execute arbitrary code on an unsuspecting user's machine, which is the vulnerability exploited by literally all of the worms circulating out there right now, and your suggestion is that someone other than the party responsible for those vulnerabilities is to blame? This is sort of like saying that criminals aren't the only ones to blame for their crimes.
Treat everyone who gets a virus like a child. If your computer is a broadband connection and you get a trojan or virus which is detected by the broadband company then they should have the right to treat you like a child because you have shown that you are not responable enough to use the Internet without "training wheels.
These "training wheels" would consist of software that these people would be forced to use after they get infected. First the broadband company should shut down access from that computer. Then if the person wants to use that broadband company agian, he must agree to have software installed on his computer which will check for and update virus definition files daily and check for security patches daily and download and install them if a new one is present.
This system only punishes the guilty (fools who already got a trojan or virus somehow) and leaves everyone else alone to use the Internet as usual.
You provide an economic incentive for them to go and learn how to prevent this from happening in the future. Most people, if they have to pay to have their computer fixed enough times, will do something to prevent that.
Depending on where you make most of your money (service or repeat hardware sales) you might want to inform them that they can educate themselves as to how not to have this happen, which would prevent the need of future service.
Who says it hasn't happened already? I remember when the Internet only exercised censorship over advertisements. Now the ads are free, the naked girls aren't, and if you wanted to see how a bomb works the FBI and the CIA will fight over who gets to shoot you first.
(Not that I ever download, or condone the use of pornography, or building bombs. Please don't shoot me, Ashcroft. =))
I'd like to point out that I haven't been infected by a worm or virus yet. Thats not to say my system is bug free.. though linux does have its ups when it comes to security. As far as spam goes, mail delivery needs to be redesigned. And not one of these dumbass MS solutions of a nickle an email.
The road between democracy and tyranny is paved with secrecy in the name of security.
Why don't we just ask the Koreans? Eveyone and their dog had broadband there.
The Philosophy of Liberty | lewrockwell.com
Windows XP has a software firewall that is simple, but works pretty well for most users. Stateful, permits outbound, denys inbound. It will allow inbound upon user request (in the config menu) or program request (not sure how that works). It's off by default.
However, it's not going to be for long. Service Pack 2 is going to turn it on by default. This will cause plenty of whining and MS bashing, I'm sure, but hopefully it will help a little bit.
However the main problem these days is with attachment-clicking syndrome. Most viruses don't come through exploits, they just come through e-mail. For every one like Blaster that uses an exploit there are 500 like Bagel that go via e-mail attachment. People need to learn to quit opening random attachments.
The Internet SHOULD BE A RIGHT and it should NEVER be filtered
or have access to it restricted in ANY WAY. The Internet is the only
place on earth that gives people REAL FREEDOM instead of government
issued pre-approved freedom morsels(with restrictions of course).
A virus or worm or ddos problem? GET OVER IT it's part of the
freedom that the Internet offers. If ANY kind of restrictions or
filtering or regulation is allowed it will be taken and used as a
wedge to turn the freedom of the Internet into the type of spoon
fed service you get from cable TV or the like. Do you want that to
happen? Copyright infringement? screw that copyrights have been abused
anyway... Intellectual property? screw that as well... the digital age
is transforming the way we can get/access things and business will
have to change to accommodate IT not the other way around.
It figures that the only good thing I've seen come out of
ANY of the societies on earth will be crushed and destroyed
because the people in power and those not in power simply can't
handle people having REAL FREEDOM... GIVE YOUR HEAD A SHAKE PEOPLE!
-S
--- What parts of "shall make no law", "shall not be infringed", and "shall not be violated" don't you understand?
Let us not forget that one of the main reasons it is sow easy to spread vifuses and worms is beacause M$ Windoze makes it possible. If more people used system software based on unix or linux then things just woulden't have gotten to this point.
411 Y0UR 8453 4R3 8310NG 70 U5!! -NSA
Now, anyone semi-profficient in visual basic can write a very destructive virus.
It is pretty well known that many of the e-mail worms out there were written in visualbasic. here is an example. Well, I'm sorry you are so uninformed that you don't know about these things already. WhateverPlease try again in 30 seconds.
/. is down...
Its been down for 15 minutes or so as of 6:32 PM Pacific Time...
And people thought it was bad when
its the end!
That's a really alarmist opinion to take. What would the solution be? Take a pill dude.
Well, it survived the first clueless freakoid onslaught, as AOL, CompuServe and Prodigy flooded the Internet the first time.
The problem might again be back on the ISP's side for some of the solution. Do ISPs start blocking most ports for residential broadband connections (like the NetBIOS ports...that might be a great start), essentially leaving only Port 80 and "secure" ports (like for SSH)? Do they start restricting residential users to using only web-based e-mail access and remove POP3/IMAP message access, or at least block Outlook users' access to said services and ports?
Who knows? But eventually it will come down to a few of the major ISPs and other service providers understanding how most of the recent viruses/worms/trojans/DDOS things tend to work, and colluding (here is that evil word) with each other to put the clamps down in a mostly heavy-handed and abrupt fashion, but possibly as quietly as possible (or at least until Congress is asking them what they are doing about this evil menace by evil-doers).
Or maybe it will result in all the various large domains (i.e., the various cable and DSL providers) essentially turning into a bunch of big NAT'd and firewalled fiefdoms at their main internet access points...
Also, there does not seem to be an ecomonic reason for ISPs to try and come up with part of a solution, one way or another. Whether it is from the Heavy Hand of Government laying fines on subscribers or on the service itself for "permitting" or "facilitating" (by not trying to prevent or make exceedingly difficult) misuse of internet services and facilities, or some whizbang technical solution or solutions that make the recent spate of network-based attacks much more difficult to pull off or easier to turn off, then not much will change.
But maybe some of these things will start getting nasty. It always seemed like the old PC viruses of the past that were the most feared, and thus garnered the most attention by antivirus geeks, were the ones that deleted files or f'ing with partition or FAT tables. The more subtle ones, that changed file content, got less.
There are mitigating factors, and ironically most of it is tied to the baby Bells and their competitors.
Every communication line is multiplexed. In other words, a telephone trunk line open to the public at large may actually only be able to handle 1/10 of the total possible traffic.
But broadband lines have been multiplexed much worse.
So that as long as everyone does not use broadband, the speeds are high; but as soon as everyone goes over to it, guess what will happen?
And then those who want the speed they had in the beginning will get a new offer: pay twice as much again and you can have it back. And so forth.
So things are faster now, but it's not a constant upward curve.
Internet Access..... The only people who use broadband internet access are pirates, pornographers, and thiefs! The MPAA and the RIAA know best....
This idea of broadband access creating a "breeding ground" for new malicious code as well as allowing the code to be spread more rapidly and universally seems to parrallel the problems that have been facing public health officials for the last century.
With the increase in human mobility due to cars, trains, planes, etc. more people can come in contact from disparate places more rapidly and more often. This has resulted in once isolated diseases with limited scope becoming important health concerns. SARS is a prime example. Toronto became an infected city, though thousands of miles away from the epicenter. Yet we develop technology to aid in the detection and treatment of diseases. We don't, though, regulate people's movement. Temporarily there might be economic forces that isolate areas (i.e. airline travel stops due to lack of demand) but such effedts are temporary.
I don't see a need to necessarily worry that broadband access's negative effects will trigger overregulation. Instead, I think that systems will be developed that mimic biologic systems. Oftentimes, evolution has produced solutions to complex problems in very elegant ways that we could not have developed using traditional methods.
I am under the assumption that most /. users are competent when it comes to handling spam and virii. I regularly cycle my primary e-mail address and use the farthest thing from Outlook as an e-mail client, in addition to simply harvesting e-mails from a party I am not familiar with and junking them with glee.
What I am trying to say is use a degree of competency and the user will not even be aware that around them is this supposed world of disorder and choas.
I don't see how the two are closely related. IMO, more broadband will increase freedom because it will give more people more access to larger amounts of information. Also, an "always on" connection will encourage more people to host their own websites and share even more information. As the threat from viruses increases, those who don't take the time to learn about and protect themselves from the risks will be removed from the pool of people participating. I think people will quickly learn to buy virus software and click the "yes, I want to install that update" button. The internet is too great a resource for people not to invest the time and effort to maintain their link to it.
Are slashdot editors bias?
Are Democrats biased? How about Republicans? Please, I'm sure that one of these groups is "bias". Won't you please tell me which?
With all the M$ slander I'd hate to conform but the basis of most of these problems comes from the fact that Microsoft won't implement approved standards.
/stand ing and I'm sure along with me, the ppl at the FSF and the Open Source community in general would be having a jolly old chuckle.
Honestly, what advanced features of Mutt for instance, are exploitable by an incoming email? If say I do have clickable links it would at least then be my own fault if I was tracked by image tagging (or whatever the term is now).
Standards keep evolving for the worst as the majority continually incorporate them and become dependant. It's like the internet is full of junkies, they're just not on smack, they're on M$.
It's got to the point now where my plain ol' locally configured MTA can't even connect to a mail sever over my bandwidth hogging 56k connection to deliver an email because the stereo-type of acceptable internet use has changed for the worse. I am blocked because I am on a dynamic IP.
My mail client and 56k connection do not contribute to any of this service degradation but I am the first one to be blocked and ignored.
Where else in our existence can rules be made by the powerful for the powerful and the weaker democratic exterminated? OK it's not as bad as all that but Capitalistic society indeed sucks arse.
I would just love to at least see a plain text only version of outlook (may I add mime compliant) for the more network aware windows user. *snigger* yeah I can see that happening. Jeez I crack myself up.
To wrap it up, although this dynamic content revolution is impeding me to an extent (there is always a way round), I pray (meditate, think about with joy, take your pick) that it is hopefully the undoing of these corporate empires driving their own standards for the bottom dollar. If it all came crashing down tomorrow I know that I'd still be
You can only hope. For now, it's time to reboot.
Today's broadband ISPs are a bit more sophisticated than the shabby dialup operations of yesteryear. Now they offer as standard spam & viruses filtering, NAT, real routers as opposed to modems, and more.
Also more and more mere users have come to understand the importance of patching, disabling services, not trusting attachments etc and even Microsoft is supposed to be shipping some kind of firewall software as standard now.
Things are not as one-sided as it looks.
At least, that is, until they rebuild them for Linux.
This sig no verb.
Moral of the story: Put everyone back on 28.8 connections, and Slammer, et al., will wither and die.
No thanks - I'll take my chances!
A post a day keeps productivity at bay.
I block all the DSL and cable addresses I know about, mostly by means of a large domain name based list I have compiled, plus a few DNS based blacklists. But I think spammers are figuring out that I'm doing this, and in their desperation to ensure I end up with the largest penis in the world, they have resorted to making their spam zombies use their ISP mail servers instead of connecting direct to my mail servers. This is a definite trend. I guess I will have to start blocking those servers next. In the mean time, I'm providing the abuse desks at those ISPs with lots more evidence to ignore. I wonder what the spammers will do if I just quit using the internet altogether? Carrier pigeon?
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
I've often wished for the days of dialup internet was a nicer place but as technology makes faster connections possible, people make faster connections necessary by thinking "everyone has dsl, its no problem to download a 500mb file" also I bet the infection rate of worms would drop drastically if everyone wasn't 'Always-On,' connected 24/7
Most Linux install disks will clean a PC. Not only will they clean the PC of the infection, but they will also clean it of spyware, as well as greedware. And it's free.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
The advent of widespread broadband access, per se, is hardly cause for a breakdown in basic Internet functionality. Talk about inferring cause and effect. What is responsible is a breakdown in the caliber of the network user. Prior to the Internet being opened for public access, you had primarily large-scale governmental, corporate or institutional users, any of whom are (presumably) a harder target than the average Dell owner with a Surfboard. By the logic of this post, it would make perfect sense to restrict everyone to 110 bps Baudot communications in order to make it harder for worms to proliferate. That's ridiculous. What needs to be done is to secure the network, by both the end user and the connectivity provider. Blaming high transfer rates is, well, like trying to cure diarrhea by tinkering with the plumbing in your bathroom. If you try to treat a problem symptomatically, rather than analytically, you are unlikely to find a cure.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
What do you mean by "authenticated access"? Do you mean the password the user uses to submit mail via AUTH-SMTP and/or MSA? I'm sure the virus will (when it needs to) just sit there and wait for the user to actually send some mail, and just spy on the entered password, and proceed to spam far and wide at some point thereafter (like when the computer goes idle so the user doesn't know the spamming has started).
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
You do know that a whole sluice of other programs, open-source and closed, over the years have had bugs which allow execution of code, root exploits etc etc.
Yes, lambast MS for making for poor security decisions and software. Also blame clueless users and admins who don't apply patches, or click on attachments sent from strangers. Blame other software that is equally as comprimised as MS's products. Blame companies that make progarms that need to be run in administrative capibilites. Blame virus and worm writers, ffs. If there weren't virus and worm writers, would poor security even matter?
Microsoft are a not the whole internet, you know. There are other parties to blame as well as MS.
The first worm of the internet, was a unix worm.
and your suggestion is that someone other than the party responsible for those vulnerabilities is to blame? This is sort of like saying that criminals aren't the only ones to blame for their crimes.
You really are have bitten hard on the anti-ms fud that the trolls spew, haven't you? I never said Microsoft weren't to blame, I just said they weren't the only ones. Read up this same comment.
While I've got a OC-192!
Oh wait, the servers I want to get to should be on fast connections too!
Awesome furniture, accessories and cabinetry in Santa Rosa, CA: http://humanity-home.com/
The recent blaster worm was not written in visual-basic. Lots of worms are written in C, java and god knows what else. Does that mean we should blame Sun et.al as well?
By the way, one example doesn't make a trend, nor qualifies as proof. Show us hard data showing percentage of statistics affecting Internet explorer, or hard data showing the percentage of worms written in VB.
The network becomes a more heterogenous environment. It's how eco systems (macro and micro) protect themselves. And they can communicate "information" relatively quickly.
One man's pink plane is another man's blue plane.
User stupidity is the #1 reason for virus outbreaks, worms, and the like. I wouldn't blame broadband, I'd blame the people with broadband who are too stupid to handle it.
The reason for the morbid degradation of the internet is due to an increase in the number of exploitable people using it. What tech savvy person buys SPAM, opens "cool_song.mp3.exe", or doesn't question their computer when random popups start occuring? If everyone on the internet was smart, most of the crap wouldn't be around.
What about all that backbone fiber that was laid leading up to the .com bubble burst? I'm talking about high-speed fiber of which only 1% is currently lit.
My Broadcom stock went from $50 to $1 because telcos and other infrastructure types over-bought and laid fiber. Much of it remains unused.
If lit, how many additional resources (routers, telco cabinet equipment) would have to be added to accomodate the new fiber capacity? I'm guessing the conduits are populated, but the switches aren't present...
It's the plethora of idiots with unsecured Windows boxes on broadband who don't know about firewalls or antivirus software or routers that's bad.
Striking fear in the authors of godawful fanfiction, I am here, appearing in darkness, Tuxedo Jack!
We've been hearing this since back in the day. Whatever. The internet evolves in a "darwinistic" way just like malware. Right now the problem is poor or non-existent security on client computers. Clients on the net will have to get fixed or they will be cut off a la Comcast. So the IT people of the world will make a few billion fixing broken software. Nothing new here. Whoop-de-doo.
2. When your dentist says "this will hurt just a little."
3. Any engineer or tech that says that it simply can't be done
As a rule, it's better to say "I can't think of a way to do this." Never is too strong. Maybe you can't find a way, but someone else will.
-- $G
...that none of these problems seem to exist with Mac OS, FreeBSD, or even (GASP) Linux. so broadband is not a negative effect on the internet, or our freedoms. it's a negative effect on windows . so to save the internet we must bomb microsoft.
who's with me?
If Joe User needs to use the privileged administrator account to do things like installing software, changing system settings, etc etc; they'll simply use the privileged administrator account as their normal account. Though they may not have full access to everything root can do, I can still see this leading to the same problems you'll find when Joe User uses the Administrator account on his Windows box as a normal user account. As the grandparent said, the Problem Exists Between Chair And Keyboard. Regardless of the operating system, put an idiot at the keyboard and they'll wreak havoc with it (intentionally or unintentionally). What makes you think that the same sort of people who STILL haven't patched for things like Codered and NIMDA would patch for things like Lion/Ramen? Changing the operating system fixes nothing if the person who uses it is still bereft of any sort of competency.
I really don't like the point here, but it's hard to articulate why.
As cell phones become more popular, we're enabling instant communication between people. This helps to promote terrorism, as terrorists now have what's essentially instant, private communication with each other. Cell phones are thus leading to a social breakdown through terrorism.
It's preposterous to argue that. You can't really say I'm wrong -- terrorists could use cell phones to communicate more readily. That's how I feel about the whole point here: yes, you can transmit viruses faster, but I think it's really a pointless observation.
________________________________________________
suwain_2
No, no, maye, no and no. Thanks for playing.
Wish they would save dumb-ass posts like this for the weekend.
Houston Roadrunner, as part of their recent bandwidth upgrade has started blocking ALL incoming TCP traffic. While this prevents people from running their own webservers and email servers, it also prevents more innocuous things like ssh servers for remote access, and most P2P connections. Very annoying.
It's evolving!
We'll probably eventually just lock down everything, and only let familiar things in.
You wouldn't get a 404 error. 404 = page not found. There has to be a server to know that the page isn't on it. What would happen is a 'site is not responding'. You wouldn't get any responses from the site.
Photos.
Maybe for you, but that's not everyone's idea of ideal service. My ISP has discovered that about 1.5 T1's worth of his bandwidth is going to NOTHING BUT PORT SCANS, 99% of which originate in a tiny handful of APNIC and RIPE netblocks. You know what? A poll of his customers showed that most of us wished he would just lop those dark corners of the internet off. He is getting his IBP to implement exactly those filters on most of his IP blocks. Those few customers that need to do business with those heathens can have one of the raw, unfiltered IP's, and deal with the port scans. The rest of us get our upstream bandwidth back, and many fewer portscan hits against our firewalls. Hurray!!
Earplugs! Haven't you ever tried them? They work wonders with my noisy PC... Huh?! What did you say?
Free Firefox news reader.
With the least perverse kind of overtones possible, I think it's safe to say quite a few slashdotters would be interested in seeing what the consequences of said programs would be when a truly vicious one achieves high saturation.
Anyone wanna see what the internet would be like with 1/3 it's normal traffic? I picture it like a sort of post-apocalyptic scene where the survivors rule.
Of course, this idea is only neat if I'm one of those 'survivors'.
The problem isn't broadband, but rather too many clueless users. It sounds awful to say it, but there are too many uneducated people with powerful computer connected to the Internet.
My guess is that a new Internet will appear (possibly using VPN or IP-over-IP tunneling) that will re-establish the Internet as we knew it. Possibly comprising of academics, hippies, and techno geeks. Sweet.
Ironically, while reading this story's comments, the auto-included Slashdot bottom-page quote was: "If you own a machine, you are in turn owned by it, and spend your time serving it..."
Are we all enjoying life yet?
the article speaks of worms & such evolving to bring down "the internet".
nothing evolves without a need.
Including the internet. thanks worms!
-judging another only defines yourself
The threat to freedom posed by worms and other malicious attacks is several magnitudes smaller than the threat from governments and insidious corporations.
For example, spam (which would fit into the 'insidious corporation' category--after all, spammers make millions of dollars in profits is what is driving it) will decrease the quality of e-mail more than any virus or trojan horse spread through e-mail. People are more likely to scale back e-mail usage because of spam than virus attacks. Similarly, governments tracking you (and your devices such as cellphones, PDAs, etc) through IP addresses will be greater threat to freedoms than the worst worm. Of course, the worst scenario is when corporations work with governments to take away freedoms (things like RIAA and MPAA would fit into this).
Viruses, worms, and others can be stopped--the user has the power. Just like how you can stop mosquitoes by using mosquito netting or anti-bug repellant, you can prevent these attacks by using firewalls, not clicking on unknown attachments, and so on. In contrast, government and corporate influence is difficult to combat by a single person.
The only problem with worms/viruses/etc right now is that the general public is unaware of the aforementioned solutions. Computer users don't even know what a firewall is. Hopefully the day will come when users know as much of a firewall as bug repellant.
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Seeking the meaning of life... @slashdot of all places
Are you sure about that? I thought it was signs of some *software* breaking down. Keep in mind that the vast majority of regular users who doesn't have much insight in security are coincidentally also using one of the least secure operating systems with Internet access.
Maybe the inter... ahem, software would heal with new development philosophies?
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
ISPs will find technical solutions to this problem, because it is their backbone that gets beaten up by all this crazy stuff that's circling around.
There will come the time where outbound smtp or netbios or sql-server or whatever will be blocked for residential ip pools, so that Joe Average's PC that got infected by 17 different worms/viruses/spamproxies/whatever can't propagate them further.
If you need some of the blocked ports you will have to call support or use a webtool and let them open it up for your connection.
This way the users who don't need the ports or don't even know what ports are, can't contribute unknowingly to the problem. And you can asume that those technically literate enough to request opening some ports on the ISP firewall are responsible enough to take precautions to avoid infection with malware.
The best method of course would be to watch all traffic originating from home PCs and if virus traffic is found to cut off the connection until the PC is cleaned. But I don't know if intrusion detection systems are capable of scanning traffic in the Gbit/s range and if scanners are reliable enough to not report false positives.
And I would make it mandatory in the ISP terms of service to have a virus scanner on every PC that wants to connect to the Internet.
Then we can blacklist all ISPs that dont require their users to have clean PCs so that everyone is free to filter traffic from those sites.
RedShirt
Microsft spel chekar vor sail, worgs grate !!!
Dial up users with Windoze get hosed just as fast as "broadband" users and have additional risks. They use the same email, IM, and browsing software and they get just as poluted. They will wait longer to get less information, but they will wait as long as it takes because they have to. The automated root kits will get them while tyey are trying to browse CNN and the email worms come with their email just like those for broadband. The only difference is that they have to go someplace to get a software fix because they don't have the time to research and download one. Dial up users also have uniqe problems, porn dialers and disconect malware. Porn dialers ring up charge lines in the middle of the night so the user recieves $500 phone bills at the end of the month. Hang up programs hang up the user frequently so that they have to wait for a reconnect. Go dialup! Porn dialers are more common than you think and commercial software may even be using the technique to gather information.
Windows sucks. It's designed to control and screw the user. Information exchange and user functions are secondary goals to money making in Redmond.
Don't blame the user, help them out. Commercial software vendors bombard them with BS and make life difficult for free software users. They are constantly inventing new file formats and abusing patent law to make sure free implementations don't exist. While there are free alternatives for everything worth while, the average user does not know this. Nor is the average user in a position to do the research it takes to purchase reasonalbe devices that will work. If you are clever, you will see this as a chance to make money for yourself!
You don't have to screw your neighbor to make money.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
This is all a part of Microsoft's Master Plan, aka Road Map for the Future.
1. Notice that the Internet really is a threat.
2. Kill Netscape by choking off its air supply. (Give away IE for free and bundle it.)
3. Put out buggy OS and App code that damages the internet.
4. Call for drastic changes to the basic internet protocols.
5. ?
6. Sit back, fat cat like, and collect your tolls from all "internet" (MS version) traffic and transactions. (The email stamps was only a ruse, mwhahahaha, we wanted it all!)
7. Profit????
A Nony Mouse
We should all go back to the telegraph and one-key keyboards then!
Didn't Bob Metcalfe, the father of Ethernet, also predict the Internet would collapse on itself by 1996? He ended up eating his words publicly, and now the ONLY thing Bob is well known for is inventing Ethernet. So be careful, mentioning 'Internet' and 'Collapse' will upset the Illuminati and ruin your career.
Obviously, the time to distribute fixed and patches goes down as well.
The real "time to distribute patches" is the total of (a) the time required for the manufacturer to discover the bug, (b) the time required to create a patch, (c) the time required to for the user to figure out that yes, they REALLY DO NEED TO DOWNLOAD the $%^&ing patch, (d) the time required to download the patch, and (e) the time required to actually install it (and usually, reboot).
Increasingly available high bandwidth/throughput connections on DSL will cut into the time for step (d), but the big problem is at the "Aunt Tillie" bottleneck at step (c)... which increasing connection speed won't help diddly.
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
I'll leave it to the reader to determine which (if any) consequences logically follow:
Before you start flaming me for the second item, I am NOT saying that I think the computing industry (hard- and soft- ware) should be regulated. HOWEVER, I am a BIG fan of personal responsibility. Think about these points and how the computing world would be if adopted by everyone:
- If you are a professional coder/MFG, put out professional quality products and TAKE RESPONSIBILITY for those products. Too many companies have hidden behind licensing terms that absolve them of resposibility for too long.
- If you are an amateur coder/mfg, label your products clearly as such and let people know this from the moment they begin to use your product. That way the users can decide whether the amount of risk inherent in using your product is an amount they are willing to accept.
- Use common sense and think about the consequences of your actions.
How many virus/worm infections could be stopped if ISPs simply shut off access to infected machines when they see drastic changes in network usage patterns that indicate infection? This is my opinion, but I would rather have to make a phone call to my ISP than to have my box remain rooted by someone. This is just an example, but I think it makes the point about common sense.Remember the computing community is a COMMUNITY, and there is one baseline principle that lets all within a community coexist: Swing your arms around you all that you want, but your right to swing your arms ends where my nose begins.
Laws affecting technology will always be bad until enough techies become lawyers.
Law enforcement agencies are slowly moving towards "non-lethal" technologies to solve the issue of nuetralizing their "problems".
Why not create a relatively non-destructive (in a larger social sense) strain of virii that exploit the holes that other worms, trojans, and virii utilize/open? It could cause the operating system to not boot, or just completely disable the network, not affecting user data. What this would achieve is forcing the L-class user to take their machine to their guru or guru-for-hire to fix the problem, before their machine could inflict any more nastiness on the rest of Netville.
Performing sanity checks on your own beliefs is vital in avoiding poisoned koolaid.
Anytime you make a large change in the culture, like when the Internet first emerged from the underground, you are going to have a massive die-off, followed by a flowering of new growth that would have been thought impossible before.
Remember when the .com's crashed? Internet commerce exploded, then collapsed. But then - then it recovered in ways that weren't anticipated. And just think - now we can get pictures of a man dropping a deuce on his wife's forehead for pennies a day!
But seriously, what is needed in the computer world these days is an understanding, especially on the part of Microsoft, that uneducated people are a threat to themselves and to those who are educated. How hard would it be for Microsoft to put together a tutorial that teaches new computer users HOW their computer works?
Currently, Windows Help (I tried it, once) is basically a collection of self-aggrandizing propaganda pages talking about how Windows can do this, can do that, is all-powerful and ever-living. It doesn't say a word about why crashes happen, what can be done about them, how Windows uses it's drivers to communicate with hardware, etc.
Not that everyone would be interested in such a tutorial, but if more people understood what their computer is actually doing, behind the scenes, how an email message is put together, addressed, sent; then they wouldn't be falling for these "social engineering" viruses. (ie. "Naked Pics of Britney Spears, attached!", or more realistically, "You file request here is put on attach sexy!")
The other day I got an spoof email directed towards my paypal account. These folks thought I would type in my username and password, give out ALL my personal information, just because they had done a nice job spoofing paypal's layout. I didn't fall for it, but I can imagine thousands of people who would. I found myself frantically emailing clients who are inept, my family and friends, warning them that it isn't real, because I could see how an ignorant person would fall for it.
If those people knew that you can look at the message headers to figure out where the mail "really" came from, these viruses wouldn't infect very many people.
Or how about this - many years ago the mail was so corrupt that the government had to step in and establish the Postal Service. It might not be a bad idea to require individuals to identify themselves reliably before being able to send an email from a given address. A centralized system would be easy for the government to abuse, but perhaps there is a way around that.
Guns can't shoot themselves -- they require people to pull the trigger. Broadband itself isn't bad, it's the spammers --regardless if they use dialup, T1, T3, or better.
Spammers have done a great job of making my email almost useless. Most spam solutions still allow too many false positives or negatives to be worth the money.
Adversiting on the web is going to do the same thing -- give it a few more years and the web will be just one big collection of advertising. There are many sites that started out with a wealth of knowledge and modest Ads they have turned into commercial land with little, if any, real content. In my opinion, About.com is a good example. In a few years, the vast major of the web will be this way.
SPAM solution made easy: 1 spammer, 5 cords of rope, 5 hourses, and fireworks. Be creative.
The internet is a free scale network. If you look up some of the information behind such a network you would realize a few KNOWNS
Believe it or not a free scall network and the Internet:
Can not be destroyed
Can not be owned
Individual or single entitites on it only have minimel impact (HUBS having the most influeance, and I don't me devices)
No one can even fully understand the complete workings of the internet.
These are almost FACTs, I know some may despute them but with out going to deep into the concepts I can asure you that Broadband or a Nuclear War will not destry the internet (Though it might lower its usage a little)
-- Disclaimer: I can't really back up anything I post on
I like the idea of an ISP providing unfiltered access, then slowly restricting it as your system becomes infected with various crap, eventually cutting you off entirely when your PC creates mad network traffic. In addition, though, they could provide a service whereby they keep you computer updated and protected if you CHOOSE it. They could provide McAfee or whatever, close ports to your drop, etc. This, of course, would cost an extra $2 or so, but I know a lot of people who are uber-paranoid about viruses, but lack the intelligence to practice safe surfing and would gladly pay a small pittance to have these services protecting them. People are far more aware than they used to be of the existance of viruses thanks to articles in the NYTimes and such. BAH!
I signed up for time warner road runner in august of 1999 in columbus, ohio for 39.99 a month. I know pay, 4.5 years later, 44.95 a month!!!!!!
what the fuck am i doing wrong.
I think there's an inherent conflict there in that the corporate market is going to want many services enabled by default (computer browsing, etc), and the home user should have those disabled.
I guess since XP does the Wizard" thing for Internet setup, they could use your answer to "are you on a local area network" to shut down things for a home user. On the other hand, lots of people have home networks now...
-Mark
Windows XP SP2 is obviously only going to help if the user base has XP installed. I expect there'll be lots of systems out there running older versions of Windows for some time to come.
I don't think we'll ever have a good solution for "attachment-clicking syndrome". Wouldn't be too hard for the OS to check for obvious problems, though -
"Your computer has attempted to connect to more than 5 different email (SMTP) servers in the last ten seconds. This is USUALLY the result of a computer virus. Click > to disable smtp to any server other than your default email server(s)"
-Mark
And while it isn't as bad as it once was, and in fact does some things very well, it's still broken enough to be extremely aggravating.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
You can't really use the words "explain" and "Telstra" in the same sentence without a negative and a couple of intensifiers in there somewhere. They've historically been the most totally clueless telco in any economically developed country; India's VSNL was worse (but are gradually liberalizing), and there are little underdeveloped countries that have worse service. And yes, Australia's as big as the main part of the United States, but Telstra couldn't find enough clues do the Right Thing in Sydney, where 1/4 of the population lives, much less out back in Wagga Wagga.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Looks like a M$ fanboy losing his temper or being paid to look like they are. Tut, tut.
Please tell me you don't believe any of what you've just said otherwise i'm going to have to kill myself right-fucking-now.
Keep your head but, yes, I believe it.
Tell me, what exactly is to stop these same dialers from operating on a linux machine?
OK, I'll tell you. The three things that make it very difficult for free software to have Windoze type problems are:
First, sound design. With free software all hardware is controled by the kernel running as root. This makes it much harder for malware to do things it should not. You might be able to trick my browser, but you won't get permision to run my modem very easily. Good design also makes it harder for other people to make my machine do anything at all. My mail clients don't call processes automatically because someone sent me a sound file. I have to save the file or tell my client to do that. My OS does not have files that I can't see or erase, so clean up is much easier to. Windoze is a single user OS with lots of band-aids and very poor hardware control and software that does things it should not.
Then again, you have no idea what software I'm running so you don't know how to craft the thing that breaks me. Sure, I'm unusual and post screenshots of my desktop, so you might be able to take me out personally, but outside the M$ monoculture you are not going to be able to craft a 21k Venerial Bisease that creams the internet. There are simply too many options available with too many versions within each option.
Worse for Billy boy, the number of holes in free software is low due to PEER REVIEW.
All three of these things greatly reduce your ability to own my machine with worms. A Linux, Solaris, OSX or BSD user has to try very hard to make their computer something that can be broken. Windoze gets broken automatically and regularly and the problem is not going to be solved with anything less than a fresh start: AV, Firewalls, blocked ports, draconian email and software restrictions have all proven inefective. The problem is not on the operator's side of the keyboard, it's the big fat trap that's been set by Billy inside the machine.
Don't think Billy's not trying. I'm sure he'd give me a nickle if I could craft a work to take out so much as 5% of the world's free computers. I can imagine he's got teams of people in India working on it. It's not going to work.
The proof is easy to see. Windoze machines get burnt all the time. BSD, Linux, Mac, OS/2, Solaris and other OS don't. Free software runs most of the web and sends most of the worlds email. The targets are all there and very high profile. When they run Microsoft, they get nailed. When they run anything else, life is much easier for them.
Now, that did not hurt did it? Install Mepis or some similar software at your place of work today. Make yourself root and lock the others out if you don't trust them. Your job will be soooooooooooooo much easier.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
What enables worms and virii to propogate rapidly is the insane widespread use of notoriously vulnerable software: MicroSoftware, to be precise. Don't blame high speed connections for this.
All Rights Reserve Without Prejudice, Angela Kahealani. All information + transactions nonnegotiable + private.
Not the increase of bandwidth malware, spammer and other buggers can use that will lead to a breakdown.
The misconceptions of the basic structure of the internet in the past are all it needs (see SMTP which does not include any security measures).
The problem emerges just now since it obviously brought us to a point where there is no other way than to solve them.