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70% Of 2004 Virus Activity Down To One Man
arpy writes "According to a report produced by anti-virus software provider Sophos, 70% of anti-virus activity in the first half of this year can be blamed on Sven Jaschan, an 18-year-old German who wrote the Netsky and Sasser worms. According to the report, "Sasser claimed the top spot of the virus chart, in spite of the raging battle between the widespread Netsky and Bagle worms." The Register has a good summary of the report."
I could of sworn it was Bill Gates..
Get a rope.... (raspy cowboy gunslingin' voice)
> The Register has a good summary of the report.
70% of slashdottings were caused by Slashdot.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Probably not a good article to have floating around with your name in it. I'm sure there are plenty of helpdesk personnel, network administrators, and "computer guy" friends who would like to punch that guy in the mouth.
Scapegoat?
Isn't he the one Valve blamed for the HL2 source code theft as well?
70% of virus infections in my neighbourhood are caused by just one woman.
For all intensive porpoises your a bunch of rediculous loosers
To be honest, I'd rather have to do AV work on one virus 70% of the time, and spend the other 30% fixing a couple of others. Maybe write a script if need be, and 70% of the time, I just do the same thing over and over.
Or, you could spend 10% of the time working on each of 10 viruses. Suddenly, you think, I wish I could be 70% sure what the problem will be, it is alot easier.
The mainstream and tech press is always implicating Russian crackers or links to .ru sites...
What's the real deal? Someone is feeding us disinformation with a shovel.
You got to wonder why Microsoft never did this before. From a business standpoint, the return on investment for this $250,000 bounty is probably going to be quite impressive.
...99% of virus activity this year due to bugs / vulnerabilities in products from a single company.
"The computer worm he created continues to spread despite the fact that their creator has been taken out of the equation."
duh!
The computer worm he created continues to spread despite the fact that their creator has been taken out of the equation.
How on earth must one believe that a worm works (or think that one's readers believe that a worm works) in order for them make such a statement?
I'm reminded of a great quote by Charles Babbage. Babbage was asked (by a member of parliament... of course) whether his analytical engine will, in spite of being given erroneous input, nevertheless arrive at the desired answer. Babbage's response?
"I cannot rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that would provoke such a question."
Accountability on the heads of the powerful.
Power in the hands of the accountable.
Yeah Netsky and Sasser have gained much more notoriety but actually phatbot has been (and still is) the more dangerous worm/trojan/backdoor around in 2004.
There are currently several thousend different modifications of phatbot around and in contrast to Netsky/Sasser, phatboy infected systems are being commercially exploited as spam relays for UCE/UBE and Hatemail. In Europe neofascist/neonazi groups use phatboy to finance and also to distribute their propaganda.
You can buy lists with the ips of compromised phatboy-infected computers to use for your own spam-enterprise. There are even groups which will code you your own version custom-built to your likings.
Strangely the author of Netsky/Sasser has gained much more public interest. Yeah it was probably more annoying and a real hassle for the sysadmins. On the other hand phatboy is more dangerous than netsky and is actively exploited with criminal intent. Although the writer of phatbot has been arrested as well (coincidently also a german) all you ever hear about is the author of sasser.
Jeff
THANK YOU!
People like you help me argument against the beady-eyed managers that a computer-monoculture is bad for business.
How else could I easily bring Linux or Firefox on Windows to our enterprise customers? And hey, what people know from the office, they will also use at home.
Not to say that you help the OSS community, but you do.
Thanks again.
Netsky forms a major share in that 70%.But that is including all its variants.I do not know if u attribute the credits for the Netsky variants [A,B,C,D...] also to Sven.I beleive the variants are from other virus hobbists as well.It is not fair to attribute them all on Sven at a staggering 70%.
fifteen jugglers, five believers
"...one of Jaschan's schoolfriends revealed the worm author's identity to Microsoft."
http://www.sophos.com/virusinfo/articles/netskyher o.html
The only thing new in this world is the history that you don't know.[Harry Truman]
I, for one, welcome my Yahoo Serious Overlord.
Vinge is a great(!) SF author. Many of his novels deal with an idea he calls the Singularity; the concept that technology will keep accelerating until we gain the ability to increase our own intelligence, at which point the changes will come so fast that we we will become unrecognizable to pre-Singularity humans.
... perhaps Sasser and Netsky were worse?
One of his fundamental ideas is that the growth of technology will give individuals more and more power. I'm not sure if he explicitly says this himself, but one of his themes is that individual people will have the power of atom bombs. It won't BE atom bombs, it will be something else... like the ability to write viruses.
In terms of direct harm, it would appear that Sasser may have done more damage than slamming planes into the WTC. Indirect damage, everyone overreacting and doing stupid things, was tremendously greater with the WTC, of course. But in terms of direct, measurable damage
Speaking, again, purely in economic terms, I wonder how Sasser and Netsky rate against the Hiroshima or Nagasaki bombs? I realise that the viruses probably didn't kill anyone, and they didn't start or end any wars. We don't feel it as much because everyone paid a little bit, instead of a few people paying a whole lot... but in terms of actual dollars/yen/economic value, I wonder how they compare?
However that comparison comes out, being singlehandledly responsible for 70% of all virus activity over the last year is *a lot* of power. Vinge's Singularity may not be that far off... assuming we don't virus ourselves to death first, anyway.
Because a guy with a compiler will do alot less damage than a company with a govenment which will do whatever they say.
Think...how hard is it to clean up Sasser? How hard is it to get DMCA/INDUCE/etc. revoked? Which would you prefer to try?
And the virus writer who can do this has put a lot of effort into it. MPAA/RIAA/SCO just sue people again, and again, and again.
You DO NOT speak Latin. Stop making up words. There is no plural tu the latin word virus. It means "poison", the plural of which is "much poison" (notice the absence of an s) in most contexts.
Even if it had a Latin plural, it would not be "virIi". That would be the plural of "virIus" which doesn't exist. It cannot be "viri" either, as this is the nominative plural of "vir" (man).
This guy wrote the worms. He is directly responsible for 100% of the damage they caused.
I'd say people are justified to be angry at him.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
"So what does your son do?"
"He's in prison after writing the worlds most successful computer viruses. Ouch! Don't hit me! Ouch! Stoppp!
-WolfWithoutAClause
"Gravity is only a theory, not a fact!"It's bad enough that they feel the need to "compete" against other virus writers for some internet version of "street cred" but now we're fucking ranking them?
How long until people start writing viruses just to "get points" on some chart somewhere? Christ, you people have no logic whatsoever.
Coincidentally, 70% of my voicemail messages are Sophos salespeople. Andrew, if you're reading this: for the love of God, STOP CALLING ME!!!
irb(main):001:0>
"On two occasions, I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." -- Charles Babbage (1791-1871)
Sindri Traustason.
And I'm sure more hours than that were spent trying to clean this up... try him for murder.
Nearly half of german youths ready for work cant find meaningful employment due to the sluggish economy and heavy-handed government regulation of industry. The adult unemployment hovers 10-14%. Germany still widely uses the apprentice system for working youths into the economy, even for white collar jobs. Other youths become perpetual students (6,8,10 years) in the low-cost university system. So there's lots ofidle, creative people to get into mischief.
"More power to him I say.[...] Expecting people 'not' to crack/compromise insecure systems, a daydream you're having"
Newsflash: the real world was not built on being 100 unbreakable and unpenetrable.
E.g., your front door would _not_ be unbreakable to someone determined to get past it with an axe. It's a known vulnerability, for the past few thousands of years, and noone's fixing it. Your windows are likely even more vulnerable.
E.g., locks can be picked. Locks with master keys allow for escalation of privileges by attacking one pin at a time. It's a known vulnerability too.
The way Real Life works isn't to waste manpower and money to make something 100% impenetrable. Real Life works by basically just setting up a big sign that says "you're not allowed past this point." And if you do, we'll throw your sorry ass in jail.
That's really all that your front door and lock are: a sign that other people are not allowed past that point. If someone actually does the effort to pick the lock or hack down the door, it's proof enough that they did get their hint to stay out and deliberately circumvented it. So we throw them in jail.
If someone entered your home, it's not the door manufacturer's fault, it's not the lock manufacturer's fault, it's simply the thief that's to blame. That's the one who deserves some fine time in a state prison.
That's the security model that the Real World society was built upon. It's not perfect, but it worked wonderfully so far.
And here's your free complimentary clue for the day: those Windows users' instinctive expectation of computer security is the same. They don't expect their computers to be an impenetrable fortress, since their RL home or car isn't either. They do expect that whoever breaks past the boundary of their home, car or computer be thrown into state jail.
Unrealistic expectation at the moment? Maybe. But not an _unreasonable_ one. As in: it's not unreasonable to throw the script kiddie or virus writer in jail anyway. Sure, we won't stop trying to make the apps more secure, but in the meantime we also throw the asshole in jail to deter other assholes.
And maybe it's time to give users what they ask for, instead of idiotically insisting that they addapt to what we feel like programming. Not even just in this aspect. The software industry is a fucking disaster in this aspect, and all this whining about "idiot users" and "idiot managers" is just proof of it.
Any other industry, they try to make things comfortable and obvious for the user. In the software industry we just call them idiots and have whole sites dedicated to whining about them.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
To use your "real world" model, Windows is not analagous to a locked car sitting on the street in a relatively nice neighborhood. Windows is analagous to a car with all its doors open and a key in the ignition, sitting in the middle of downtown Gotham City.
It's *going to* get stolen (hijacked) unless you do something about it.
I'm all for putting this guy in jail. But at the same time, it's unrealistic to expect hackers to stay away from a computer whose OS is full of vulnerabilities, from which they stand to profit.
You say you want to give users what they ask for....what all MY users are asking for, primarily, is "not to be bothered with this bullshit virus stuff," and the best way to make that happen at this point, IMHO, is to make it far more difficult to gain access to their computers.
Sure, you can make an example of this guy, but I don't think that's going to stop the tidal wave of virus attacks. Instead of relying on the courts to enforce things like this, I'd much rather see an increase in computer security. Just give all your users personal firewalls (the RL equivalent of locks on their car doors)....something really simple like Zone. Software that DOES make things comfortable and obvious for the user.
And when the problems go away, they will remember that security, not the court system, solved the problem.
--B
While I agree with the essentials, you are very wrong. Devil in the details.
My front door is out of reasonable reach except for maybe 15000 people. My computer on cable modem is available to (however many people are on the internet) spread all over the world. This is a fact, and if I sell a door that opens to such a huge number of people, it should be designed to handle it.
I may want to beat this particular character, or prosecute him. Another fact gets in the way. He is in a different country 9 time zones away. I can't talk to the local prosecutor to get action. I can't even make it an issue country wide, since it is outside of my country. Laws, iow, mean nothing. So again, my door has to be built with that in mind.
With these realities in mind, perhaps it is sheer incompetence to sell a product that, for example, has ports designed for a lan open to the whole world. Or allows execution of things from who knows where.
Derek
What an honor! I'd like to send to a congratulations gift. What's your email?
You know what?
The article ( I know, none of you read it ) also talks about Kim Vanvaeck. She was arrested as well.
The funny part is, she might have been good at code - but she was not good at crime.
A quick Google groups search comes up with funny stuff. Like her back in 1998 asking for someone to please send her a virus so she could learn about them.
Or her in a discussion about sleep habits which starts out asking for the best "hacker babe"...
There are more. But the best part is that in almost all of them she always ties her real name, "Kim Vanvaeck", to her "hacker name", "Gigabyte". It must have taken the authorities a whole 7 minutes to track her down...
As an aside, anyone able to find a photo of her? This is Slashdot... It would be cool if she was as attractive as Angelina Jolie in the [silly] movie "Hackers". (Why else do you think I would be searching on her name?)
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
70% of virus infections in my neighbourhood
... buffer.
are caused by just one woman.
I heard the reason is that one can open her ports
in promiscuous mode...
Yeah, if you want some fast physical I/O and you
have insufficient cache, just
Why is it that reporters only make boneheaded statements like this when talking about computers? Last week Francis Crick died, and nobody bothered to point out that DNA structure remains double-helical.
we want sensational head lines and vague generalizations. They're much more fun :).
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
And 23% of all virus activity comes to you courtesy of Margaret Tillman of Chebansee, Illinois who dutifully clicks on every email attachment and forwards every chain email that comes her way.
Here's to you Ms. Tillman; we salute you.
Wanted: witty unique signature. Must be willing to relocate.