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Spamhaus Calls for Fining Operators of Insecure Servers
Barence writes "Anti-spam outfit Spamhaus has called on the UK government to fine those who are running Internet infrastructure that could be exploited by criminals. Those who leave open Domain Name Server resolvers vulnerable to attack should be fined, if they have previously received a warning, said chief information officer of Spamhaus, Richard Cox. When Spamhaus was hit by a massive distributed DDoS possibly the biggest ever recorded at more than 300Gbits/sec — open DNS resolvers were used to amplify the hit, which was aimed at one of the organization's upstream partners. 'Once they know it can be used for attacks and fraud, that should be an offense,' Cox said. 'You should be subject to something like a parking ticket... where the fine is greater than the cost of fixing it."
Unfortunately, it's also fairly accepted that there are such things as "attractive nuisances."
Classic example is the swimming pool on your private property, where you ruthlessly shoot and kill all trespassers whenever you see them climbing the electrified barbed wire fence around your pool. As long as you successfully kill each one of them before they get to the pool, you're safe. But if one of them makes it to the pool, jumps in and drowns, his family is the new owner of your house. Then you have to spend one of your family member's lives in order to get it back (tip: have cement trucks idling out in front of the house before your family member's counter-suicide-sacrifice, waiting and ready to fill in the pool, the instant that you re-acquire ownership).
It gets worse.
Suppose you're on patrol in your car, driving around the perimeter of your property, looking for pool-suiciders before they get too close to your pool. Suddenly you see a mob of them pushing against the fence on the east side. You take the M16 from your car's gun rack, go stand by the fence, and shoot them all. Now you've got this stinking pile of rotting corpses over by the fence, and you know you have only 10 minutes at the most, before Municipal Zoning Enforcement comes over and condemns your property. So you put the M16 back onto your gun rack, take the shovel out of the trunk, and start digging a mass grave.
Little do you know, that the mob you just massacred was TEAM A. That's the decoy team. Meanwhile, upon hearing the sound of the gunfire, TEAM B and TEAM C put on the bypass clips to reroute the current on the north fence, cut through the wires, and advance onto your property.
TEAM C immediately heads toward the pool area at maximum speed, while TEAM B stealthily sneaks toward your car, parked over by the east fence. They peek around from behind your car, and see you digging the mass grave. Now is their chance! They break into the car, and take the M16 off your gunrack. Just then, you hear an alert siren and your radio crackles to life. "MAYDAY! MAYDAY!" your wife in the tower yells, in a panic, over the radio, "People are jumping into the pool!" You hear the distant sound of rifle fire (she is now shooting at TEAM C).
The body burying can wait. You need to get to the pool area now, to help your wife kill pool-jumpers and then try to pump the pool water out of the lungs of anyone who has already drowned. You throw down your shovel and run toward the car, and that's where you see .. oh fuck, who is that? There's four dudes milling around your car. One of them sees you and and yells "he's coming! Now! Give it to me! Here!" and grabs the M16 out of one of the other thieves' hands. He quickly shoots the other members of his team, and then puts the end of the barrel into his mouth. You're running right at him, and in just a few more seco--pop. He falls to the ground.
You're fucked. That M16 was an attractive nuisance. You are responsible for all four of the deaths around the car, and who knows how many people have already made it into the pool by now. You grab the M16, throw it onto the passenger seat, jump into the car, and hit the gas. One of the members of TEAM B, as he died, fell such that he was partly under your car, and so now your rear Firestone tire drives over his head, crushing it, spilling jellied brains onto the dirt. Bump. The M16 slips down the passenger seat and .. what happened? Did it? You're in shock. It takes a few seconds to register. "Hey, my leg," you say, stunned.
"Oh fuck, my leg." Just when things were at their darkest,this happened! Un-fucking-believable. You don't hear your wife firing in the distance any more. She's probably worried. Totally demoralized and surrendered, mayb
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump