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.

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