US Shows Interest In Zombie Quarantine Code

bennyboy64 writes "Barack Obama's cyber-security coordinator has shown interest in an e-security code of practice developed in Australia that aims to quarantine Internet users infected by malware, also known as zombie computers. He reportedly said it would be a useful role model for the US to adopt. One suggestion within the code is to put infected users into a 'walled garden,' which limits Internet access to prevent further security problems until quarantined. Another is to throttle the speed of an infected users' Internet connection until their computer fixed. The code is also being considered by other Asia-Pacific countries, ZDNet reports."

Comments

Re:Principle and practice

[the_raptor]

I am an Australian on Exetel. I have had the quarantine kick in twice due to my house mates getting infected. Both times it was a spam relay, so it was presumably easy to detect the massive jump in port 25 traffic. Once you are quarantined all ports but 80 are blocked and port 80 only serves up a page telling you that you are quarantined, what you need to do to remove the quarantine (clean your system then click a link to tell the automated system to check your outgoing traffic), and links to ISP mirrors of malware removal tools. Both times it took about 15-30 minutes to clean the infections and get the quarantine removed.

I think schemes like this are best practice and the only way the Internet is going to be usable with the rise in online crime. Even if you have a secure local OS nothing stops users downloading trojans.