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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'."
it shows the healthy consumption of motor vehicles by our populace, a sign of a prosperous and strong economy. Putting regulations in place to require cars to have locking doors might slow the distribution and growth of cars.
The rock, the vulture, and the chain
Of course, it's not even necessarily an indicator of rapid broadband takeup. It just means too many of the users are pathetically unsavvy and that the government isn't creating enough of an awareness about this sort of security issue.
Living in the UK myself, I can tell you that I still know lots of people who don't have broadband, and many of those that do are so uninformed that I don't go near their computers for fear of punching them in frustration.
What the heck is that government official smoking?
Today's weirdness is tomorrow's reason why. -- Hunter S. Thompson
Nigel Hickson, head of European e-commerce and telecoms regulation at the DTI,
This idiot should be sacked immediately. Someone with such a powerful position should not be so ignorant. Given that he is so ignorant he should be removed from his position immediately.
While I can see where the official is coming from, there's another thing to look at. The massive presence of botnets also shows the dominance of Microsoft in the field. Perhaps the officials should point out that the botnets could be reduced or eliminated by changing to alternatives such as Linux or BSD. Heck, even OS X would be better than Windows from a security point-of-view. So while it is indeed a great thing to celebrate that the UK has such broadband penetration, we need to remember that the market is dominated by the OS which allows botnets to begin with.
Is this an interesting new spin on hacking attacks, or sheer madness?
It's sheer madness. There's NOTHING positive about botnets. Hello??
I enjoy large posteriors and I cannot prevaricate.
Saying "people are maliciously exploiting our technology is great because it means we have technology!! is not addiquate logic unless just having technology was your only goal."
I do security
One right wing politician said something similar in Spain about the mad rise in houses' prices: this is good because it means that the Spaniards have plenty of money to buy these extremely expensive houses. Sure: my salary (and the mayority's) has raised about 6% in the past two years, and flats cost maybe 30% more, and raising.
"co.uk domains get depeered by Cogent, Level3 for hosting large numbers of botnets".
To be painfully honest, 'crats all over the world needs to keep their brains disengaged and let their IT specialists do the speechwriting.
That brit just found his "career in decline" light lit.
First rule of holes; When in one, stop digging.
In truth, most PC users are happy to install antivirus software, sales people will push it on people..
The problem is that most of these people who install antivirus software (esp. Norton and Mcafee.. the top vendors pushed by sales reps.) have an unpleasant experience. It slows down their computer, it fails to protect them from {{trojan:general}}, and many consumers feel like they are being scammed.
There is another problem too.. people feel that "antivirus" software should be enough. These are the people who buy antivirus software at "bargain prices" that doesn't include a firewall (which is probably good because it would drive them nuts.) or spyware protection.
These security systems are indeed scams. Norton Internet Security 2006 is practically an advertisement for their Systemworks package. The web browsing security is rated as "limited coverage" because it doesn't include parental controls. Instead of blocking ActiveX using a white list, they use a blacklist. Only minor vendors like Panda actually ensure your Windows Updates are applied. People feel ripped off when the trialware that ships with most PCs wears off.
The security software vendors, the retailers, and the computer manufacturers can all do better. The government needs to rate security software, and comission studies to find out why people aren't applying them.
Cybersecurity is something they can actually do something about.. combatting terrorism (especially to our allies) is a much more vague proposition.
Swaziland celebrates achieving a 64% HIV infection rate as evidence of the virility of their menfolk.
Routers aren't cheap, not good ones anyway. Of course, I don't know how much it costs them to provide the modems, but I suspect that a router with a built in modem costs more than the modem on it's own.
Also consider the fact that cable modems (as opposed to ADSL ones) aren't found built into routers (at least, I've never seen one), if the cable providers started providing them instead of the basic modems they'd have to start giving out a considerably more complex piece of kit and wouldn't be able to get off-the-shelf ones. That would seem to me to be an expensive solution compared to the driver CD having Zonealarm, Spyboy, AD-Aware and AVG free edition on it and it taking care of the installations itself (rather than: 'there's some good software on here, go install it yourself if you can be bothered/are technically competent enough to do it').
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