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Microsoft's Vigilante Investigation of Zombies
Morgalyn writes "According to an article at Information Week, Microsoft has decided to fight zombie-launched spam in their own way. In conjunction with the FTC and consumer rights groups, Microsoft set up a clean computer and then infected it. They monitored the 'zombie' over the course of 20 days - 'In those 20 days, this one computer received 5 million connection requests from spammers, and sent 18 million spam messages'. This whole operation has led to the (partial) identification of 13 different spamming groups, some of which reside in the US and may be prosecuted under the CAN-SPAM act."
To whoever modded this as troll, you obviously missed the Ballmer rage reference.
That's not a reasonable analogy. This is more like the car is broken into within 26 minutes.
The Internet is like Baghdad for computers but 10000 times more intense.
The operating system doesn't merely fall apart - it's broken apart by the equivalent of roaming street thugs.
I agree that microsoft it partially responsible (does rpc really need to be accessible by default?) - but on the other hand, until very recently your average linux install didn't take long to get 0wn3d either.
They blocked the spam from being sent:
0 5/10-27ZombiePR.mspx
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2005/oct
Though the Information Week article didn't mention this, an article at another site makes it clear that Microsoft blocked the outgoing spam messages during their honeypot experiement.
Well you can order sp2 discs from microsoft free of charge: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/updat es/sp2/cdorder/en_us/default.mspx But it is true that most people who dont already have it or know about the free order are not going to be bothered to go through the hassle to get it free.
TFA:
The computer was quarantined to prevent it from actually sending the messages
But...whatever...
There are two kinds of people: 1) those who start arrays with one and 1) those who start them with zero.
The market share argument is BS FUD. Always has been. Always will be. Microsoft just doesn't have a corporate culture that encourages good coding practices over eye candy and feature bloat.