Comcast Thinks About Stopping Zombies

LehiNephi writes "Comcast has finally admitted that its users are responsible for a large amount of spam, and they are thinking about how to stop it. Apparently they haven't been turning a blind eye to the problem after all. The simple, blanket approach of blocking all traffic on port 25 would have too many side effects, particularly for users running their own mail servers. However, they can block that port on individual cable modems-a sort of surgical strike. As far as I'm concerned, the sooner they implement this, the better!"

Comments

And the plan's manager's name is 'Van Helsing'!

[SensitiveMale]

nyuk nyuk

Re:Here's an idea.

[rolocroz]

Nah, we love having even the tiniest amount of usabilty. (I'm assuming parent was a Linux troll.)

Re:Port 25

[tokachu(k)]

Better yet, they should block all the ports (135-139, 1025, 5000, and others, both ways) that are used by the thousands of Netsky, Bagle, and Sasser variants out there. Save Windows users from themselves. Also, they should keep a look-out for those pesky DDoS zombie hosts. Reverse-engineer the worms, find out which IRC host they're using, and block all access to those controlling IRC servers (this ain't too hard to do). Let the script kiddies cry in their parent's basement because their 5,000 zombies can't be reached.

Oh, and there should be some sort of waiver that a customer can ask for if they're running a Linux server or something that lets them use all those ports. This, of course, should be administered with a short computer competency test to weed out the fakers.

Re:How to tell? (The Slashdot Evidence)

[gandalphthegreen]

But imagine if you administrate a beowulf cluster...then you must be able to fly/leap tall buildings in a single bound or something similar.

is it the answer?

[GoatPigSheep]

Should we also surgically break the legs of everyone who walks around passing flyers out ?

Re:Port blocking

[Openstandards.net]

I just went through the steps to install Yum and do updates for RH 9, using fedoralegacy.org. I was blown away how easy it was. Just had to run a few lines I copied from their web page, and boom, it worked. One more line of code, and it becomes a nightly cron job.

If you don't want to use the cron job, you simply run "yum update" whenever you want to update.

Apt-get looked simple too, but I decided to try Yum.

You could easily automate the installation process with a simple script or bin.

In contrast to Windows, the updates cover a lot more software than Windows, which only covers software supplied by Microsoft. However, if you manually upgrade to a newer release than was included in your distribution, then the updates will no longer be automatically applied. Thus, if I upgrade from Mozilla 1.4.x to Mozilla 1.6, I'll no longer get updates for the RH9 release, as my current version will always be newer than the one included in the release. Of course, if you manually upgrade your software, then in theory, you've demonstrated a bit of technical proficiency above what you described.

I don't give a shit

[taustin]

Comcast will come out of my local block list someafter the heat death of the universe.

May they rot in hell, up to their necks in viagra and penis cream.

Re:read your usage agreement-The Geek Party.

[RogL]

And if your ever-so-slightly paranoid scenario unfolds, look for the Congress (House and/or Senate) and Supreme Court to call "shenanigans". We've had elections during wartime before. No-one's managed to derail the system and turn us into a dictatorship yet. Regardless of what happens, Bush has to win the scheduled election to keep his seat.