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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."
This is so NOT the story I was hoping it was going to be.
Like a baby Harp seal on the open ice, my dream has just been dashed.
In contrasting this with the president's ability to declare a cyber attack and disable internet access in the United States, I'd say this seems like a reasoned approach that would hopefully be considered an alternative to the former where applicable.
My only real concern is that of privacy. How exactly do they go about telling you're a zombie? Well written malware isn't exactly going to advertise infection, and even hosts which may be participating in a denial of service attack can't definitively be proven to be infected unless they're obvious (like sending a TCP packet with an invalid combination of flags, for instance). Scarier would be using the 'zombie' excuse to monitor net traffic on a connection for 'investigative' purposes. So it may just turn out pointless or it may be a ruse for a different kind of control. Anyone have any articles as to the effects of this or some cases where it was actually used in AU?
Currently my network looks like a single netbsd box from the perspective of my ISP. The original Australian proposal could have been interpreted to mean I would have to tell the ISP what OSs I was running and what software they had installed.
So if I had windows here they would want to know how it was firewalled, etc. So yeah I can tell them three ubuntu laptops, one mac laptop with windows running inside vmware. Two servers running netbsd and the ISP are going to get dollar signs lighting up in their eyes. They will want me to pay for a "business" connection now, because of the nodes I have running. Not good for me.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
I like this idea in principle, but concerned about the details. The article says it's "formalising an existing code of practice" so perhaps Australians here can let us know how it currently works?
I'm thinking mostly about false positives - I've had a Mac identified as running some Windows virus, at the time I presumed due to NAT somewhere at the ISP level. Getting that sorted out was a matter of waiting half an hour or so, but I can imagine that becoming a more serious issue if this is 'by law'.
The other thing worrying would be forced steps to remove things. I could go with an "ensure you're clean rule", but would be against a "ensure you're running this particular security measure" rule.
Cheers,
Ian
Some are forgetting the obvious that this would require the monitoring of traffic.
I'm guessing that the new paradigm the government is following in regard to the internet is total information control. It started with total information awareness. The original goal was to monitor all the information on the internet to see and prevent terrorism. Most of us agreed with that idea, and now that the internet is fully monitored the next step is to gain complete control over it. This way if a powerful person doesn't like what is being said on a specific website or by a specific computer, they can quarantine it. This word "quarantine" gives an indication about how the government sees unfavorable information. They see it as a "virus", or "mind virus", which is otherwise known as a meme. The only way to stop the spread of a meme is by quarantining it.
Once again this is about information control, not security. If it's about stopping zombie infectious malware as the article claims they could use many technical solutions to do this and put the control in the hands of the user. The user could set up their system to handle it and the government has no reason to get involved. Or the government could promote corporations such as Google to develop an improved version of Linux or the Linux kernel to have a feature to allow this much in the same way the NSA developed SELinux. To make it a political issue and to use Australia of all places as the example is exactly the wrong way to go about it. We all know that Australia has a completely censored internet with a list of sites people cannot go to because the government does not like the information on these sites.
This might fool individuals who don't understand technology. Saying it's to secure the internet while you throttle their broadband speed might make sense to the 16 year old kid downloading mp3s or using bit torrent. It might make sense to the adult who works in an unrelated industry with little to no knowledge about network neutrality or what is at stake when internet speeds and information is regulated in a centralized manner. To individuals who understand the technology and how to use the internet the idea of controlling the information flowing through the pipes defeats the purpose of the internet itself. I cannot imagine any programmer, hacker, script kiddie, gamer, or serious user supporting this idea. Most of us would rather risk being infected by malware than have our broadband speed throttled.
And let's be honest, child pornography is probably the worst kind of virus you can be infected with. And the only reason it's so horrible is because the laws related to possession of it are unreasonable. So before we go and fundamentally try to alter the code of the internet and create millions of unintended consequences we should debate what we want the internet to be and what it's purpose is. Does the internet exist as a weapon of war or is it something more fundamental? Should the government control the internet or should the market control the internet?
If the government wants to have this much control over it, maybe they should make it free. That's my opinion. But to bait and switch like this is unfair to individuals who have paid for internet access for over a decade, who have created most of the content on the WWW, who have made the internet what it is.
In contrasting this with the president's ability to declare a cyber attack and disable internet access in the United States, I'd say this seems like a reasoned approach that would hopefully be considered an alternative to the former where applicable.
My only real concern is that of privacy. How exactly do they go about telling you're a zombie? Well written malware isn't exactly going to advertise infection, and even hosts which may be participating in a denial of service attack can't definitively be proven to be infected unless they're obvious (like sending a TCP packet with an invalid combination of flags, for instance). Scarier would be using the 'zombie' excuse to monitor net traffic on a connection for 'investigative' purposes. So it may just turn out pointless or it may be a ruse for a different kind of control. Anyone have any articles as to the effects of this or some cases where it was actually used in AU?
It's not reasonable for the government to do anything more than monitor the internet. To start telling people how to run their nodes, what websites they can and can't visit, how they can or can't surf the web and at what speeds, is authoritarianism on the web. The internet was not designed for authoritarianism, it was designed to be an anti-authoritarian technology, it was designed to be decentralized, it was designed in this way because authoritarian centralized systems usually have a single point of failure. These overly centralized systems are more likely to fall or collapse.
The internet as it is designed now is already more advanced than the design of most other systems. To centralize and control it down to the byte flowing through each wire, inspecting every package, analyzing every bit, and controlling which bits to quarantine and which bits not, is just a stealth mechanism which can be used either to destroy the internet or weaponize it. This along with the new behavioral advertising schemes allows for specific centralized entities to feed specific information to specific computers, and now they want to be able to quarantine specific computers to block them from receiving specific information from other computers.
How can this be good for the internet as a whole? How can this be good for the flow of information from a mathematics/physics point of view? How can it be ethical if the objective is to reduce ignorance and preserve freedom of speech? It can only be ethical if the objective is to control, weaponize, and win at any cost.
This Headline wrote a check that the story couldn't cash. Bad editors, no cookie.
Poor means hoping the toothache goes away.
So if you run bit torrent and they decide it's malware, now they can throttle your internet speed and quarantine you. Or if you download legal but tasteless pornography this could be determined to be malware and your speed can be throttled.
This idea is as bad as the kill switch idea.
Obama has nothing to do with this idea. Read the article where it says cyber-security coordinator Howard Schmidt came up with this idea. If you think it's a bad idea you should direct your anger to the person who thought of it. Obama is not in charge of cyber security and we don't even know if Obama is the one behind the cyber policy to begin with. So to blame Obama is pointless. In fact Obama claimed to be for network neutrality so if hes changing his mind on an issue as critical is this, it's a shame he wont be re-elected because hes going to lose virtually all of the youth vote if he messes up on the internet.
It's not reasonable for the government to do anything more than monitor the internet. To start telling people how to run their nodes
In a competitive world, businesses WILL NOT prepare for disaster unless the executives see that it affects the stock price. Preparing for disaster is expensive, and it seldom pays off. (see also: car industry, banking industry, airlines, BP, failure to protect against natural disasters...)
If we want the internet to keep running, without collapsing during a cyberwar, then we do need to insist on some things. It's like requiring that banks keep some reserve, requiring that oil companies have a means to stop a leak, or requiring that an airline not skimp on maintenance when the competition gets fierce.
Is it just me, or is the first onslaught of posts unusually full of people who seem to want to judge government first and read/think later? I mean, beyond the usual level here.
I mean, something has to be done. We are well over 50% of the internet's capacity being used to send people junk mail, most of it both offensive and fraudulent, far too much of it containing executable payloads that harm the internet itself, etc.
If the ISPs don't take voluntary action at a level of minimum intrusion, some excited parents' group is going to hold a referendum and hand their government the right to intrude in every living room.
Sure, this proposal goes too far in places, misses the boat technically in others. It's not perfect. But it's better than legalizing deep inspection to be adminitered and performed by the agency of the UN/international courts.
If we want better than this, we need to come up with counter-proposals of our own, get out, educate people. (And get ourselves off the OS that is the primary medium of abuse.)
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
This "voluntary" icode just happens to discussed under the backdrop of the government trying to build an internet kill switch. I'm supposed to believe it's going to remain "voluntary" when the US Government is involved?
When it's voluntary then all the government influenced ISP's or ISP's with big government contracts will be pressured behind the scenes to adopt it. I'm not convinced that it will be voluntary if its not in the ISP's economic best interest.
If corporations want to do this they already can. So to make it "voluntary" when it already is an option, it looks more like an agenda.
It's not reasonable for the government to do anything more than monitor the internet. To start telling people how to run their nodes
In a competitive world, businesses WILL NOT prepare for disaster unless the executives see that it affects the stock price. Preparing for disaster is expensive, and it seldom pays off. (see also: car industry, banking industry, airlines, BP, failure to protect against natural disasters...)
If we want the internet to keep running, without collapsing during a cyberwar, then we do need to insist on some things. It's like requiring that banks keep some reserve, requiring that oil companies have a means to stop a leak, or requiring that an airline not skimp on maintenance when the competition gets fierce.
The internet is never going to collapse. That is a strawman. Industries could lose profits however and this is a legit argument. If American industries lose profit this endangers national security. Endangering national security reduces US military might and overall power. This endangers US superpower status. So all policies are designed to maintain government power and superpower status.
The problem with these policies is they make the civilian population miserable. We can't find a job. The laws all seem to be telling us what we can't do so we can't pursue happiness. This creates collateral damage on the civilian side as many civilian lives are ruined in some cases beyond repair to "win."
Why can't the military establishment find a way to win without making the entire world miserable? After a certain point the people fighting to protect these laws and Constitution wont have morale. We claim the USA is worth fighting for because it has liberty and freedom, and people can get rich and be happy. But that perception is rapidly fading and lying to the public is not going to change the fact that the American dream is harder to reach for individuals. Individuals primarily feel we are winning or losing the war based on situations they see in their own lives and sphere of influence. We might be winning the war on paper but for most people in practice it feels like we are losing.
This is the primary disconnect.
You make the laws according to the constitution. If it is important enough then people can break the rules and take the legal consequences. If you need to torture a terrorist, spy on someone, then break the law and do so. If you get the information you need great. You probably won't get a jury to convict. If you don't then you do the time. If you are not prepared to do that then what you did probably was not necessary. This only works when there is transparency and accountability. I think that once upon a time in England the hangman faced a court the next day but this may be just a legend. But that is the way it needs to work.
I don't mind if traffic is monitored. I mind if the contents of the traffic is monitored.
The bottom line is that these oligarchs want total control over information, they're threatened by the openness of the internet, the ability for people to bypass mainstream media outlets, the ability for people to share news and information worldwide without censorship or government/corporations (almost the same thing now in the US) putting everything into their own context, the dislike the ability for people to organize.....One way or they other they are going to try to destroy all that is good about the internet.
Malware is a problem, and people who don't patch or have proper security are stupid, but he model we have, where everyone takes responsibility for their own systems works fine, despite the rhetoric, and giving the corporate/government empire more control for any reason is a bad, bad idea.