Slashdot Mirror
McColo Briefly Returns, Hands Off Botnet Control
A week ago we discussed the takedown of McColo (and the morality of that action). McColo was reportedly the source of anywhere from 50% to 75% of the world's spam. On Saturday the malware network briefly returned to life in order to hand over command and control channels to a Russian network. "The rogue network provider regained connectivity for about 12 hours on Saturday by making use of a backup arrangement it had with Swedish internet service provider TeliaSonera. During that time, McColo was observed pushing as much as 15MB of data per second to servers located in Russia, according to ... Trend Micro. The brief resurrection allowed miscreants who rely on McColo to update a portion of the massive botnets they use to push spam and malware. Researchers from FireEye saw PCs infected by the Rustock botnet being updated so they'd report to a new server located at abilena.podolsk-mo.ru for instructions. That means the sharp drop in spam levels reported immediately after McColo's demise isn't likely to last."
What you're advocating is direct democracy. Direct democracy has never and will never work. Don't you people ever learn?
I wonder how all those security researchers feel after destroying a legitimate commercial enterprise and affecting a lot of people who weren't spammers. Must have been pretty righteous. Of course, now it looks like they're going to have to play a game of whack-a-mole. What ISP shall die next at the hands of vigilante justice? Will my internet connection go down because someone uses my ISP for spam? If my computer becomes infected with malware, how long before I have 'researchers' digging through my private data? What will the next press release say -- Russian NAPs taken offline by massive DDoS initiated by "researchers" from the United States? How long until this kind of behavior sparks an international incident?
This is all eerily similar in scope, methods, and results to a real world issue; The war on drugs. You see, there's an economic incentive to do this. As long as that incentive remains, all you're doing is changing the face of the problem. Today it's hackers in Sweden. Tomorrow it's script kiddies in Russia. Next week it'll be unemployed programmers in Romania. And how can people justify this kind of behavior in the name of "research"? It's the same kind of attitude that the DEA has -- which is to use ever-increasing levels of force, and to continually lower the standards they have to adhere to in order to "catch more criminals". At some point it de-evolves to the Judge Dredd scenario... People driving around metting out instant 'justice', with no review or appeals process to speak of.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
1. I don't have a solution, I'm just considering the ethical aspect.
2. I'd rather deal with spam, malware, and con artists clogging the internet than vigilantes blowing holes in it.
3. As to who's protecting them -- it's not a question of who but what. In this case, economics.
4. It has taken this long because until now people were restrained by ethical considerations prevalent within the community. However, a certain moral flexibility seems to be developing now out of frustration. This can only end badly.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
"Girl" is not the only thing you're in training for, apparently. What are the ethical aspects of making scattershot assertions without citations or even replies to people who point out weaknesses in your argument?
When I was a kid, we only had one Darth.
took Precedence