Fred wrote: > [...] > I'm thinking one might be able to create an evil program to scan for > these infections and close them down.
I do like the idea, but if I'm not mistaken: 1. Somebody did this for a previous worm. 2. It caused it's own unintended side effects. 3. The author is being prosecuted. > [...] > I'm thinking this would be just as bad as creating a virus, but at > least someone was fighting for the people! I think it probably WOULD be just as bad. Something like the good samaritan/vigilante firing into the school yard to get the bad guy. The fundamental problem is that it's equally illegal to 'fix' systems without permission (though I'm no lawyer.) And of course, left to their own devices, people will come up with 100 different interpretations of what 'fix' means. > Sysadmins need to do something to take control of their networks. At > least a million infections of .a, that means a lot more zombies to > send spam and attack our blacklists. THAT is the underlying problem. The counter-attack approach is certainly interesting... and maybe law enforcement should/could/will do something similar. But it is reactive at best. It sure would be nice if ISPs would choke off infected machines. - Bob
