You're speaking from the point of view of an individual. I would imagine that a complete loss of internet connectivity and/or security for an extended period could be pretty terrifying to the bigwigs at a lot of America's corporations, which as we know have more influence in Washington than us peasants.
No, I'm speaking from the point of view of a human being. Things blowing up is far more terrifying that a loss of business. Sorry. Also, taking down the Internet is a very sloppy way of making a point. Terrorists have particular targets. They don't just hate the whole world. They chose the World Trade Center and the Pentagon for a reason. Just any buildings wouldn't have been as effective.
I disagree with this. On the whole, the idea of cyber-terrorism is a carefully laid plan perpetuated by those who stand to gain from having a paranoid populace. Count how many times the US uses "terr'rists" to justify overreaching legislation.
How does that one saying go? "Be careful of attributing to malice what can be just as easily attributed to ignorance (stupidity?)"
There may be some element of planning, but for the most part I think that it comes down to ignorance and an utter lack of understanding of the "enemy." I'm confident that the people jusifying the overreaching legistlation think they are doing what is right. But they are just politicians.
al qaida on the whole is a technologically proficient group of murdering thugs, do not underestimate them. after all, the 'base' does not stand for 'database' or anything.
I didn't mean to suggest that al-Queda is incapable of so called "cyber-terrorism." I am just saying that it doesn't fit the profile. Whatever technological savvy they do have is most likely going to used to communicate securely over the Internet rather than destroy it. Real terrorism involves high profile instances of violence, not hacking or denial of service attacks.
a morning show guy here in LA put it very succinctly, stating that while we americans are all bent out of shape about prison abuse in iraq and who did what 35 years ago in vietnam, qaida has probably got guys with camcorders and digicams snapping recon shots and timing elevators in buildings.
This is a perfect example of distracting people from the real issues using fear. How we treat people around the world, especially in times of war, is far more important than paranoid speculations about what a phantom enemy is thinking about doing to us. There is nothing we can do about terrorists "casing the joint." But we can change how we express ourselves in foreign policy.
It is about TERROR! It is about emotional manipulation. I'm sorry, but no matter how financially devastating a loss of internet might be, it really doesn't compare to the emotional effect of watching two towers in New York getting hit by jumbo jets and falling to the ground. Not to mention the symbolism behind the world trade center. This whole idea of "cyber-terrorism" is a big joke perpetuated by the ignorant. I'm not saying that nobody will evertry to DDoS the Internet, but I don't really think it would have much to do with a "Jihad" or whatever. And it would be a mistake to lump it in with terrorism. I'm sure terrorists will stick to much more visible and non-virtual acts to get their point across.
Anyone who wants to take a small light aircraft up (and has one/rents one and has a licence) can pretty much go for it.
Yeah, but those things can barely carry the passengers, much less a half a ton of explosives. Flying cars would have to be able to carry a reasonable amount of weight to be useful.. especially as American's get fatter.:-P
Most worms I've seen (particularly the "let's look at the Outlook address book and start mailing" kind) tend to like to drop files in C:\windows, which'll be prevented on a correctly-configured box. If the engine is dropped in a user's directory (which I'm starting to see), it'll mass-mail, but at least it's confined to that user and doesn't rampage over the entire system.
The point is that worms don't seem to need adminstrator access to cause a lot of harm... enough harm to be a serious problem.
This is the same as ANY OS. There's no way (outside of a dumb terminal) to prevent users from doing stupid things to their own files (including dropping mass mailing engines into them).
You can prevent users from doing stupid stuff by not giving them so many stupid things to do and so many fun ways to do them! ANd Windows sure does excell in the "so many fun ways to do stupid things even as a user" department. Mac OS X, for example, is so much simpler (to the user) than Windows. The ways to do stupid things as a regular user are very much limited. I also thing the mechanisms for malware to work with are limited in Mac OS X.
I'd rather run Linux and update whenever I feel like it... on my own terms. Rather than in Windows with a gun to my head. There just isn't that sense of emergency with Linux (or Mac OS). An unpatched Linux box will last a while on the Internet without getting compromized. A Windows machine won't last more than 2 minutes, literally. ALso, there are fewer things to update in Linux. Usually just core applications (apt-get upgrade) and occasionally a kernel. With Windows there is the OS, individual applications, virus scanner, adware scanner, etc. You don't even need virus/adware protection in Linux! So there is that much less hassle.
It drops an executable into the Startup folder for the *user*. In other words, no root privledge is ever exercised, and the app would likely do nothing on a correctly-configured box (the worst malware can do running as non-root is wipe a user's directory -- same as in Linux or any other OS with similar permissions). Learn about security before you comment on it, please.
Where have you been the last several years? Viruses and worms do many things to a users computer that don't require Administrator access. It isn't all about deleting files are formatting the harddrive. Viruses and worms don't want to disable the machine because they need the machine to be working to spread!
You know, I hear that a lot. Personally, I have accidentally deleted more legitimate mail while deleting spam than my SPAM filter has made false positives. Although I do have a quarantine. I usually do a quick scan of that every few days to see if there is any false positives. Then I clear it out.
Not all filtering systems delete spam automatically. The one in question here rejects it at the SMTP level, I believe. In which case, the sender knows if their mail didn't get through and can resend.
If only computer geeks took some lesson from biologist, perhaps they could get a grip on principles to stop SPAM.
Doesn't Bayesian filtering work somewhat like the immune system? After being exposed to the "environment" it learns what is "self" and what is "pathogen" and starts distinguising one from the other pretty reliably. I currently use a server-side Bayes filter on my email and I get 99.5% accuracy with very little manual intervention. And it gets more an more accurate the longer you use it.. unlike things like SPAMAssassin which requires manual updating to adapt to new SPAM.
-matthew
Well, as long as my piss and saliva tests are not reported to anyone, I'm cool.;-)
Although I am not too worried about any of it because I think the sci-fi author that started this whole thing is full of shit. The reality is that, even today with all the snazzy technology that is available, most of what we do is based on very old technology and I don't think that is going to change 10 years from now. Look at our telephone networks.. the electric grid... the internal combustion engine, etc, etc. Yeah, this stuff is changing, but a lot slower than the hype will have you believe. The more technology we add to our lives, the more difficult it becomes to replace it. Look how difficult it has been to replace the internal combustion engine. We have so much invested in it. We just keep adding stuff to it... but it doesn't get replaced.
The biggest problem people have in predicting the future is that they assume that when something becomes technologically possible and economically feasable, it will instantly become ubiqutous and magically replace the previous, "obsoleted" technology. The reality is that even with the fancy hybrid gas/electric cars we have now, a good portion of people are still driving good ol' fashioned gas guzzlers. 10 years from now, we might see some pure electric cars on the road, but short of massive government intervention or environmental disaster, there will still be plenty of gas powered cars out there. Certainly too many to allow the new the electric cars to "drive themselves."
It totally amazes me how people can continue making ridiculously fanciful predictions of the future despite the fact that every one before them with similar predictions has been made fools out of. Where are the flying cars? Does anyone ever take into account the problems all this technology seems to be causing in society? Is it just a coincidence that so many people are swallowing handfulls of pills every day to "cure" everything from depression to obesity?
But there are those who will fear their loss of privacy (you can track where I go on the road through all the sensors! The Bible says that the Anti-Christ will put computer chips on our foreheads - cars are the first step!).
Excuse me? Privacy is very important and essential to freedom. It has nothing to do with some Biblical prophecy.
It is sad hear about what people like you will sacrafice for a little more material comfort.
I don't think Joe-Jobs are all that common. These days admins are pretty alert to the potential forgedness of email. Anyway, my point was that I don't see competetors forging spam just to get the other guy off the 'net. I think it woudl have to be something persona like revenge, as you say. This "new" idea of killing spamvertised sites shouldn't have much effect on the rate of "Joe-Jobs." It has been mentioned by other people here, there are far too many obviously SPAM related sites to shut down that borderline ones can be ignored. I don't think it'll be a problem.
Still, I don't think the terrible quality is worth it. I haven't seen the pictures of the current model (a whole.7 more megapixles) but the previous took pictures that were was full of compression artifacts and terrible color.
Oh hell, there are any number of ways one company could sabotage another. Some legal, some not. Why not just hire someone in a foreign country to DDoS or hack into your competetor or their website? Or just find some way to sue your competetor into submission. Or maybe some good ol' fashioned anti-trust. Or just buy them! Sending out SPAM in the name of your competetor sounds like one of the more lame methods of corporate sabotage. I'm sorry, but I just don't see this as being a problem. For as much as I hate the corporate world, I dont' think many will resort to the methods you are proposing.
Also, you assume that system administrators at ISPs are stupid. If I get a SPAM (I work at and ISP) supposedly coming from R3dh@T advertising fr33 l1nux dow nloads, I'm probably going to assume it is either a virus or forged to make it look like it is Redhat spamming. You assume that administrators are going to boot websites without the least bit of investigation. Why would they when the "spammer" in question is large and otherwise respectable?
The ONLY thing these things are good for is being hacked and used as a cheap non-disposable camera with a USB port (I've done the hack on the non-LCD ones). The pictures that come out of these things are crap compared to common disposable 35mm cameras. Besides the novelty of "digital" and an LCD, I can't for the life of me imagine why your average consumer would chose these things over a standard 35mm disposable. Aren't the disposable 35mm's cheaper than $19?
It is called a "Joe-Job." It happens, but it isn't very common. I imagine there'd be a lawsuit. The Internet may be a commercial wasteland, but it isn't anarchy.
You know, it doesn't really matter. It is the Right Thing To Do(tm) regardless of how effective it actually is on the problem as a whole. In the end, I don't really care how many other people are in in collusion with spammers. I can say with pride that the ISP I work for is tough on spam. And I can say with pride that the ISP I use for home Internet is tough of SPAM. And that is about as much as I can really expect. The idea is to get others to do the right thing and I commend these UK ISPs. Good for them.
Bah! Sounds like a pretty rare scenerio to me. Certainly too rare for a spammer to actually advertise this as a "service." For one thing, sites being advertised via spam are generally pretty small time. I doubt they have any sense of a particular competitor taking a significant portion of their market share. Do you really think one penis enlargment pill pusher gives a shit about another penis enlargment pill pusher? Do you think one porn site really has it in for another porn site? There are just so many of these organizations out there. Unless there was something personal between the two competetors, I doubt they care what each other does. I know the Internet is becoming a commercial wasteland, but come on, it isn't anarchy.
The council has an independent consultant suggest mixing OSS and commercial. Microsoft comes up with it's "study" showing the cost/security "advantages" of sticking with Microsoft. The council then goes into high-level, high-pressure negotiations and comes out with a great deal (except for the fact they are so going to be 0wned, big time).
You know, it isn't even really about being "0wned" these days. Things have gotten so bad that "hacking" has become automated. Most places don't even have a chance to worry about real hackers. They are too busy fending off the script kiddies and spammers. That is what makes this decision so absurd. Who HASN'T been hit by some kind of Microsoft propagated worm, virus, or spyware? It sounds like this organization is already having problems with viruses and such. How could they possibly accept such an empty promise from Microsoft?
I have a better idea to solve the "dont' know where to get the gadget used on the cooking show" dillema. Simply post it on the show's website and at the beginning and end of the show, announce to the viewers that they can logon to the website for information about products used in the show. Really simply, huh? I believe many shows do this now. No annoying scrolling ads or complex email notification schemes.
Sure, I used to use a "magazine" like that called The Computer Shopper. It was about 3 inches thick and full of "ads." Well, they were more than ads, they were actual price lists for everything from RAM to software. I could use it to compare prices between many different sources. But that was before the Internet was so big (early 90's). It has since been obsoleted by things like www.pricewatch.com and online shopping in general. If you already knew what you wanted, it was great, But I still think using advertisement in general to make major purchasing decisions is retarded considering the number of mostly unbiases sources one has to draw from on the Internet alone.
I'm sorry, but that has to be the most retarded method of "shopping" I have ever heard of. Advertisments are NOT there to inform you. They are there to mislead you into buying something you wouldn't otherwise buy. If you want to buy an appliance you should be searching the most unbiased consumer oriented sources you can find like Consumer Reports (although even those have been tainted by corporate influences). An informed, responsible consumer does not let advertisement directly influence their purchasing decisions. Advertisements are untrustworthy and insidious. We should be working as hard as possible to get them out of our lives... not invite them in. But I guess that is just me projecting my own opinions onto others.:-P
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No, I'm speaking from the point of view of a human being. Things blowing up is far more terrifying that a loss of business. Sorry. Also, taking down the Internet is a very sloppy way of making a point. Terrorists have particular targets. They don't just hate the whole world. They chose the World Trade Center and the Pentagon for a reason. Just any buildings wouldn't have been as effective.
-matthew
Not only that but they make molehills out of maintains! Yikes!
How does that one saying go? "Be careful of attributing to malice what can be just as easily attributed to ignorance (stupidity?)"
There may be some element of planning, but for the most part I think that it comes down to ignorance and an utter lack of understanding of the "enemy." I'm confident that the people jusifying the overreaching legistlation think they are doing what is right. But they are just politicians.
-matthew
I didn't mean to suggest that al-Queda is incapable of so called "cyber-terrorism." I am just saying that it doesn't fit the profile. Whatever technological savvy they do have is most likely going to used to communicate securely over the Internet rather than destroy it. Real terrorism involves high profile instances of violence, not hacking or denial of service attacks.
a morning show guy here in LA put it very succinctly, stating that while we americans are all bent out of shape about prison abuse in iraq and who did what 35 years ago in vietnam, qaida has probably got guys with camcorders and digicams snapping recon shots and timing elevators in buildings.
This is a perfect example of distracting people from the real issues using fear. How we treat people around the world, especially in times of war, is far more important than paranoid speculations about what a phantom enemy is thinking about doing to us. There is nothing we can do about terrorists "casing the joint." But we can change how we express ourselves in foreign policy.
-matthew
A more accurate analogy would be if someone gave their diary to a publisher without any sort of copyright.
Nothing was stolen from this girl. She gave it away.
-matthew
It is about TERROR! It is about emotional manipulation. I'm sorry, but no matter how financially devastating a loss of internet might be, it really doesn't compare to the emotional effect of watching two towers in New York getting hit by jumbo jets and falling to the ground. Not to mention the symbolism behind the world trade center. This whole idea of "cyber-terrorism" is a big joke perpetuated by the ignorant. I'm not saying that nobody will evertry to DDoS the Internet, but I don't really think it would have much to do with a "Jihad" or whatever. And it would be a mistake to lump it in with terrorism. I'm sure terrorists will stick to much more visible and non-virtual acts to get their point across.
-matthew
Yeah, but those things can barely carry the passengers, much less a half a ton of explosives. Flying cars would have to be able to carry a reasonable amount of weight to be useful.. especially as American's get fatter. :-P
-matthew
The point is that worms don't seem to need adminstrator access to cause a lot of harm... enough harm to be a serious problem.
This is the same as ANY OS. There's no way (outside of a dumb terminal) to prevent users from doing stupid things to their own files (including dropping mass mailing engines into them).
You can prevent users from doing stupid stuff by not giving them so many stupid things to do and so many fun ways to do them! ANd Windows sure does excell in the "so many fun ways to do stupid things even as a user" department. Mac OS X, for example, is so much simpler (to the user) than Windows. The ways to do stupid things as a regular user are very much limited. I also thing the mechanisms for malware to work with are limited in Mac OS X.
-matthew
I'd rather run Linux and update whenever I feel like it... on my own terms. Rather than in Windows with a gun to my head. There just isn't that sense of emergency with Linux (or Mac OS). An unpatched Linux box will last a while on the Internet without getting compromized. A Windows machine won't last more than 2 minutes, literally. ALso, there are fewer things to update in Linux. Usually just core applications (apt-get upgrade) and occasionally a kernel. With Windows there is the OS, individual applications, virus scanner, adware scanner, etc. You don't even need virus/adware protection in Linux! So there is that much less hassle.
-matthew
It drops an executable into the Startup folder for the *user*. In other words, no root privledge is ever exercised, and the app would likely do nothing on a correctly-configured box (the worst malware can do running as non-root is wipe a user's directory -- same as in Linux or any other OS with similar permissions). Learn about security before you comment on it, please.
Where have you been the last several years? Viruses and worms do many things to a users computer that don't require Administrator access. It isn't all about deleting files are formatting the harddrive. Viruses and worms don't want to disable the machine because they need the machine to be working to spread!
-matthew
You know, I hear that a lot. Personally, I have accidentally deleted more legitimate mail while deleting spam than my SPAM filter has made false positives. Although I do have a quarantine. I usually do a quick scan of that every few days to see if there is any false positives. Then I clear it out.
Not all filtering systems delete spam automatically. The one in question here rejects it at the SMTP level, I believe. In which case, the sender knows if their mail didn't get through and can resend.
-matthew
Doesn't Bayesian filtering work somewhat like the immune system? After being exposed to the "environment" it learns what is "self" and what is "pathogen" and starts distinguising one from the other pretty reliably. I currently use a server-side Bayes filter on my email and I get 99.5% accuracy with very little manual intervention. And it gets more an more accurate the longer you use it.. unlike things like SPAMAssassin which requires manual updating to adapt to new SPAM. -matthew
Well, as long as my piss and saliva tests are not reported to anyone, I'm cool. ;-)
;-)
Although I am not too worried about any of it because I think the sci-fi author that started this whole thing is full of shit. The reality is that, even today with all the snazzy technology that is available, most of what we do is based on very old technology and I don't think that is going to change 10 years from now. Look at our telephone networks.. the electric grid... the internal combustion engine, etc, etc. Yeah, this stuff is changing, but a lot slower than the hype will have you believe. The more technology we add to our lives, the more difficult it becomes to replace it. Look how difficult it has been to replace the internal combustion engine. We have so much invested in it. We just keep adding stuff to it... but it doesn't get replaced.
The biggest problem people have in predicting the future is that they assume that when something becomes technologically possible and economically feasable, it will instantly become ubiqutous and magically replace the previous, "obsoleted" technology. The reality is that even with the fancy hybrid gas/electric cars we have now, a good portion of people are still driving good ol' fashioned gas guzzlers. 10 years from now, we might see some pure electric cars on the road, but short of massive government intervention or environmental disaster, there will still be plenty of gas powered cars out there. Certainly too many to allow the new the electric cars to "drive themselves."
It totally amazes me how people can continue making ridiculously fanciful predictions of the future despite the fact that every one before them with similar predictions has been made fools out of. Where are the flying cars? Does anyone ever take into account the problems all this technology seems to be causing in society? Is it just a coincidence that so many people are swallowing handfulls of pills every day to "cure" everything from depression to obesity?
But I digress
-matthew
Excuse me? Privacy is very important and essential to freedom. It has nothing to do with some Biblical prophecy.
It is sad hear about what people like you will sacrafice for a little more material comfort.
-matthew
I don't think Joe-Jobs are all that common. These days admins are pretty alert to the potential forgedness of email. Anyway, my point was that I don't see competetors forging spam just to get the other guy off the 'net. I think it woudl have to be something persona like revenge, as you say. This "new" idea of killing spamvertised sites shouldn't have much effect on the rate of "Joe-Jobs." It has been mentioned by other people here, there are far too many obviously SPAM related sites to shut down that borderline ones can be ignored. I don't think it'll be a problem.
-matthew
Still, I don't think the terrible quality is worth it. I haven't seen the pictures of the current model (a whole .7 more megapixles) but the previous took pictures that were was full of compression artifacts and terrible color.
-matthew
Oh hell, there are any number of ways one company could sabotage another. Some legal, some not. Why not just hire someone in a foreign country to DDoS or hack into your competetor or their website? Or just find some way to sue your competetor into submission. Or maybe some good ol' fashioned anti-trust. Or just buy them! Sending out SPAM in the name of your competetor sounds like one of the more lame methods of corporate sabotage. I'm sorry, but I just don't see this as being a problem. For as much as I hate the corporate world, I dont' think many will resort to the methods you are proposing.
Also, you assume that system administrators at ISPs are stupid. If I get a SPAM (I work at and ISP) supposedly coming from R3dh@T advertising fr33 l1nux dow nloads, I'm probably going to assume it is either a virus or forged to make it look like it is Redhat spamming. You assume that administrators are going to boot websites without the least bit of investigation. Why would they when the "spammer" in question is large and otherwise respectable?
-matthew
The ONLY thing these things are good for is being hacked and used as a cheap non-disposable camera with a USB port (I've done the hack on the non-LCD ones). The pictures that come out of these things are crap compared to common disposable 35mm cameras. Besides the novelty of "digital" and an LCD, I can't for the life of me imagine why your average consumer would chose these things over a standard 35mm disposable. Aren't the disposable 35mm's cheaper than $19?
-matthew
It is called a "Joe-Job." It happens, but it isn't very common. I imagine there'd be a lawsuit. The Internet may be a commercial wasteland, but it isn't anarchy.
-matthew
You know, it doesn't really matter. It is the Right Thing To Do(tm) regardless of how effective it actually is on the problem as a whole. In the end, I don't really care how many other people are in in collusion with spammers. I can say with pride that the ISP I work for is tough on spam. And I can say with pride that the ISP I use for home Internet is tough of SPAM. And that is about as much as I can really expect. The idea is to get others to do the right thing and I commend these UK ISPs. Good for them.
-matthew
Bah! Sounds like a pretty rare scenerio to me. Certainly too rare for a spammer to actually advertise this as a "service." For one thing, sites being advertised via spam are generally pretty small time. I doubt they have any sense of a particular competitor taking a significant portion of their market share. Do you really think one penis enlargment pill pusher gives a shit about another penis enlargment pill pusher? Do you think one porn site really has it in for another porn site? There are just so many of these organizations out there. Unless there was something personal between the two competetors, I doubt they care what each other does. I know the Internet is becoming a commercial wasteland, but come on, it isn't anarchy.
-matthew
You know, it isn't even really about being "0wned" these days. Things have gotten so bad that "hacking" has become automated. Most places don't even have a chance to worry about real hackers. They are too busy fending off the script kiddies and spammers. That is what makes this decision so absurd. Who HASN'T been hit by some kind of Microsoft propagated worm, virus, or spyware? It sounds like this organization is already having problems with viruses and such. How could they possibly accept such an empty promise from Microsoft?
I have a better idea to solve the "dont' know where to get the gadget used on the cooking show" dillema. Simply post it on the show's website and at the beginning and end of the show, announce to the viewers that they can logon to the website for information about products used in the show. Really simply, huh? I believe many shows do this now. No annoying scrolling ads or complex email notification schemes.
Sure, I used to use a "magazine" like that called The Computer Shopper. It was about 3 inches thick and full of "ads." Well, they were more than ads, they were actual price lists for everything from RAM to software. I could use it to compare prices between many different sources. But that was before the Internet was so big (early 90's). It has since been obsoleted by things like www.pricewatch.com and online shopping in general. If you already knew what you wanted, it was great, But I still think using advertisement in general to make major purchasing decisions is retarded considering the number of mostly unbiases sources one has to draw from on the Internet alone.
I'm sorry, but that has to be the most retarded method of "shopping" I have ever heard of. Advertisments are NOT there to inform you. They are there to mislead you into buying something you wouldn't otherwise buy. If you want to buy an appliance you should be searching the most unbiased consumer oriented sources you can find like Consumer Reports (although even those have been tainted by corporate influences). An informed, responsible consumer does not let advertisement directly influence their purchasing decisions. Advertisements are untrustworthy and insidious. We should be working as hard as possible to get them out of our lives... not invite them in. But I guess that is just me projecting my own opinions onto others. :-P