FCC Chair Calls On ISPs To Adopt New Security Measures

alphadogg writes "U.S. Internet service providers should take new steps to protect subscribers against cyber attacks, including notifying customers when their computers are compromised, the chairman of the FCC said Wednesday. Julius Genachowski called on ISPs to notify subscribers whose computers are infected with malware and tied to a botnet and to develop a code of conduct to combat botnets. Genachowski also called on ISPs to adopt secure routing standards to protect against Internet Protocol hijacking and to implement DNSSEC, a suite of security tools for the Internet's Domain Name System."

Comments

Torrents

[mehrotra.akash]

Will torrent clients be classified as malware as well?

Re:Torrents

[causality]

I doubt they want to piss off some big customers.

If that's the only societal force that can spare us, then we're screwed. Big customers can be whitelisted or "undesirables" can be blacklisted.

I think what we need is to promote an awareness of just how important the Internet is, that screwing around with it for any reason other than good engineering is a bad idea. For example, the DNSSEC mandate is actually a sound idea and stands a good chance of working better than what we have now.

The moment an anti-malware system starts intentionally hindering many (or all) torrents is the moment it ceases to be a technical solution and changes into a political tool. You don't need to understand the technical details of how BitTorrent works to understand this. We need a general public that understands this, for the same reason we need to understand that "think of the children!" includes concern for what kind of authoritarian, regimented society we're leaving them to inherit.

I have to assume that any mandate to "protect against botnets" that could ever be construed to mean bans on entire protocols is going to be inevitably abused. Authoritarian types look for such "opportunities" just as businesses look for new markets. Power is just a different kind of currency.

Re:Don't want your protection

[Fluffeh]

Now excuse me while this strange web site forces my browser to full screen and scans my Linux Box for viruses...

I recently started getting calls to our home phone number (which is a silent number mind you) from those lovely "Hey, I'm calling from Microsoft to say that you need to install this program to fix your computer..." folks in some nasty call centre. While I do have a few windows machines around, the majority are also linux. I find it strangely pleasing following their instructions, but seeing how long I can drag out the fun for - not pressing the right things, getting them to repeat the instructions over and over again, trying to get them to hang up. My current record is 21 minutes, while they are peddling crap, you got to hand it to them - they really are patient when trying to snarf your money.