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Disconnection of Millions of DNSChanger-Infected PCs Delayed
tsu doh nimh writes "Millions of computers infected with the stealthy and tenacious DNSChanger Trojan may be spared a planned disconnection from the Internet early next month if a New York court approves a new request by the U.S. government. Meanwhile, six men accused of managing and profiting from the huge collection of hacked PCs are expected to soon be extradited from their native Estonia to face charges in the United States."
Why would we want infected computers to exist on the Internet anyway? The excuse that they create jobs, in cleaning them up, is not a strong one, since by that same logic you could also make work by smashing them.
If they could be disconnected in stages, so centralized support outlets are not overwhelmed, that might be a more graceful letdown for the infected owners.
It's a good test to see how secure your systems really are. If your PC's are infected, then it's time to recheck your security.
-- By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.
Don't forget the .000001% who will flame the rest of society in online forums for not being as omniscient and infallible as they believe themselves to be.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
To me, the real story is that the people behind this botnet are getting extradited and, (knock wood), will do jail time in the US.
While I would be happy for the creators to rot in prison, this is also scary. Why should they be extradited to the US? /. commenters get outraged at mention of the megaupload folks being extradited simply because they disagree with the laws that were allegedly violating. It was the same excuse that it related to machines in the US. What makes the US so friggin' special for them to be extradited? Is what they did not illegal in Estonia? If not, then should they be prosecuted for actions they took while in a country where it wasn't illegal? If so, then why aren't they being prosecuted in Estonia, where they actually were when they did illegal stuff? If we're in one country doing business with another country over the Internet, or doing something on servers in another country, which country's laws should apply? Which country should get to prosecute?
Meanwhile...I still get a dozen 419 scam emails for every craigslist ad I post. While everyone reading this probably thinks that only an idiot would fall for them, there are clearly people who do. Just because somebody isn't computer literate doesn't make them an idiot, there are real people losing real money, and yet the scammers aren't prosecuted because they're "over there" even though they're scraping craigslist's US based servers, sending email to servers and people in the US, receiving money fraudulently through Western Union, a US based company, from the US.
What kind of precedent do we want? Can we at least be consistent?
"Why should they be extradited to the US?"
Because they damaged US computer systems on US soil.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."