Comcast's War On Infected PCs (Or All Customers)

thadmiller writes "Comcast is launching a trial on Thursday of a new automated service that will warn broadband customers of possible virus infections if the computers are behaving as if they have been compromised by malware. For instance, a significant overnight spike in traffic being sent from a particular Internet Protocol address could signal that a computer is infected with a virus, taking control of the system and using it to send spam as part of a botnet." Update: Jason Livingood of Comcast's Internet Systems Engineering group sent to Dave Farber's "Interesting People" mailing list a more detailed explanation of what this trial will involve.

Comments

Prediction

[bistromath007]

Comcast Gold PCGuard+ Express Pro has detected a significant overnight spike in your network usage that suggests your PC may be infected with a virus. This process has been identified as utorrent.exe. It is recommended that you delete all files related to this program immediately to keep your personal information secure.

Hey, it must have been introduced here.

[jtownatpunk.net]

They even proactively installed AntiVirus 2009 on my system. Gosh, it's amazing how many viruses I had and didn't even know it.

Re:Seems fine to notify

[value_added]

A pop up notice in the user's malware-infected browser is not the way to notify customers.

Notifying anyone of anything was easy when the Windows Messenger service was enabled by default. ;-)

Re:Seems fine to notify

[Carbaholic]

I'm sure the conversation would be more like this:

Tech: "heylo plase tern off your computer and wait for ten seyconds"

User: "What are you talking about, I'm calling because you say I have a virus"

Tech: "Dayd you tern off your computer yet?"

User: "Did you hear anything I just said?"

Tech: "Comcast tern off not responsible kittens"

User: "Every word you say makes me angrier and angrier."

Tech: "Good, resolve glad issue. Bye"

Re:If only they had some other means of communicat

[93 Escort Wagon]

It's really too bad that a cable company doesn't have any other means of communicating with their customers other than the internet.

Hehe, you're watching TV with the family, and at the next commercial break you see a guy in an easy chair, reading the newspaper. He looks up at the camera and says "Hi there Rick! I'm Jim, from Comcast. Enjoying the show? Hey I'm afraid I've got a bit of bad news - it looks like your computer is infected with BugBot32/A."