U.K. Says Botnets Good Sign

An anonymous reader writes "A UK government official has claimed that botnet infections should be celebrated, as they prove that Britain is a prosperous place with high broadband take-up. Is this an interesting new spin on hacking attacks, or sheer madness?" From the article: "The suggestion that botnet infections have their positive side sparked some surprise within the audience. One attendee pointed out that he 'wouldn't want the value of being number one in infections to be extended to bird flu'."

Comments

Nice spin, slashdot.

[gowen]

How did "sees silver lining in botnet cloud" become "Botnets a Good Sign".
The official quite clearly said "I'm not saying bots are a good thing".

Still, at least it wasn't a dupe.

Similarly, if a NIH official pointed out that "The rise of obesity in the West is better than malnutrition", that wouldn't be a endorsement of obesity, merely a reasonable nuanced assessment of facts.

Re:Madness!

[arivanov]

Neither.

It is a "Bliar Cronie Droid" serial number Pinokio653 speaking. They will more likely die then present you with negative news. Everything has to be spun up, presented positively and be used in an advertisement of some government policy.

People keep comparing Bliar's UK with 1984. Wrong comparison. The right comparison should be "This Perfect Day".

Going full steam ahead for it.

many of the ISPs are also unsavvy

[CdBee]

the major UK broadband providers, NTL/Telewest (Cable) and Wanadoo, BT, Tiscali, etc (Asynchronous DSL) provide ethernet or USB modems rather than proper routers, meaning unpatched PCs tend to be taken over by RPC infections relatively quickly.

Also, because of the purchasing price disparity between the UK and the USA (a US$399 PC might cost UK£399 here), system builders tend to skimp on the additional software provision, as on a spec sheet, throwing in a copy of MS Works often looks better than a decent software firewall. 30-day trial AV subscriptions are also disappointingly frequent

Re:many of the ISPs are also unsavvy

[CdBee]

You can't rely on software to close ports. It's inherently unsafe especially when there are programmatic interfaces to the firewall, as in Windows FW and Zonealarm.

ISPs in other countries often distribute routers (Speedtouch 510/530 is reliable and a common choice outside the UK) - and remember more UK broadband is provided by DSL than Cable anyway. (Linksys do make a cable modem-router integrated unit, but I accept the point in that they aren't common.)