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Researchers Ponder Conficker's April Fool's Activation Date
The Narrative Fallacy writes "John Markoff has a story at the NY Times speculating about what will happen on April 1 when the Conficker worm is scheduled to activate. Already on an estimated 12 million machines, conjectures about Conficker's purpose ranges from the benign — an April Fool's Day prank — to far darker notions. Some say the program will be used in the 'rent-a-computer-crook' business, something that has been tried previously by the computer underground. 'The most intriguing clue about the purpose of Conficker lies in the intricate design of the peer-to-peer logic of the latest version of the program, which security researchers are still trying to completely decode,' writes Markoff. According to a paper by researchers at SRI International, in the Conficker C version of the program, infected computers can act both as clients and servers and share files in both directions. With these capabilities, Conficker's authors could be planning to create a scheme like Freenet, the peer-to-peer system that was intended to make Internet censorship of documents impossible. On a darker note, Stefan Savage, a computer scientist at the University of California at San Diego, has suggested the possibility of a 'Dark Google.' 'What if Conficker is intended to give the computer underworld the ability to search for data on all the infected computers around the globe and then sell the answers,' writes Markoff. 'That would be a dragnet — and a genuine horror story.'"
I have an alternative solution. Migrate to Linux. Or Mac. Or, Solaris. Or Win3.11. Seriously - everyone knows that 99.999999% of viruses and other infestations are targeted at Windows operating systems. Why stay with Windows? People with A: an IQ larger than their shoe size B: a budget smaller than the federal government and C: are literate should have migrated long ago.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Err - uhhh - hmmmm. I'm looking hard to see where I said Linux is the only option. Looking real hard. Maybe you could point that part of my post out to me? In the real world, of which you speak, people die due to stupid mistakes. So, I agree with you, that people deserve to be owned for being so damned stupid. They are just lucky that their computer can't be programmed to bite their empty fucking heads off. No one is going to die, due to a computer exploit. Errrr, wait a minute. HOSPITALS DON'T USE MICROSOFT PRODUCTS, DO THEY?!?!?! Oh, shit...... Oh yeah - one more thing. DO NOT presume to tell me just how naive I may or may not be. If/when you finish making the rounds to tell Microsoft customers just how stupid they are, I'll reconsider your presumption.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br