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Melissa suspect arrested

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the whatcha-gonna-do-when-they-come-for-you dept.

Stone Table writes "MSNBC reports that the FBI arrested a suspect believed to have authored the Melissa virus " This is definitely a tricky one: course, its a windows email virus, so it doesn't affect most of us, but he was tracked using the MS GUID. Justice? Big Brother? I'm not sure which.

1 of 424 comments (clear)

  1. Security for Dummies by purp · · Score: 5

    It was handy once, and will be handy to catch abject imbeciles, but the MS GUID (and the Pentium III digital serial number) won't be of any help to catching the moderately intelligent criminals. They'll skate around it somehow (I can think of two ways right now) and we'll still pay the viral price.

    My mother-in-law, a woman in her 50s who's firmly turned-on to the digital age but remains innocent of all but the most basic knowledge regarding computer security issues, is an easy target for these virii. She's still a digital toddler; she trusts all the digital adults out there and doesn't know that some of the misguided ones are out to hurt her. She's got some top-flight viral protection on her machine, but that only helps for the known virii.

    In the end, it comes down to education. As much as I hate it, I get to shatter her innocent enjoyment of computing and show her a bit of the darker side; she'll be wiser for it, I know, but watching her take such joy in the medium that I've grown inured to was quite pleasurable to me -- like hearing a five-year-old laugh at a silly joke you heard ages ago and chuckling to yourself, knowing how much more pleasure is ahead.

    Thanks, VicodinES, for dragging her into your world.