Well, why can we use this to our advantage? As usual, this thought emerges from Tyler Durden's punch-drunk brain, but it's worth considering... Imagine I'm working for a large Fortune 100 Company. Now imagine I hear about a sasser-like worm that will install atself and spread, BUT "it has been confirmed" that the worm will proceed to vomit spam at X for a period of 48 hours. Depend on X (eg, the CIA, Microsoft, Re-elect George W...) I might be more than willing to download that virus, provided I had some kind of assurance that it wouldn't trash all my work (and if it closes down my company for a day or two, all the better 'cause I'm way overworked). Of course, I'll need plausible denial: "Oh, I thought that was my boss sending me a file..."). -TD

From: Eric Cordian <emc@artifact.psychedelic.net> To: cypherpunks@minder.net Subject: Re: Science: throttling computer viruses Date: Thu, 20 May 2004 11:01:46 -0700 (PDT)

Major Variola writes:

...

Computer viruses and worms are an increasing problem throughout the world. By some estimates 2003 was the worst year yet: Viruses halted or hindered operations at numerous businesses and other organizations, disrupted cash-dispensing machines,

I have a dual boot system which normally runs Linux. Since it had been a couple of months since I last ran XP, I booted it on Tuesday to run Windows Update, and keep it current with critical patches. Within minutes, before I had even downloaded the first update, my box ground to a nearly screeching halt from Sasser, and some other piece of malware which was trying to make thousands of connections to random IPs on port 5000.

I've had Linux exposed to the Net for years, and have never had these kinds of problems. You really wonder why someone doesn't arrest Bill Gates for software malpractice.

It's really silly when code can leap into your machine, install itself, configure itself to start up again every time the system is booted, and then sit there using all your system resources looking for other boxes to victimize. Didn't we learn all we needed to know about provably correct secure inpenetrable kernels with MULTICS in the 1960's? Why has the world of computing been subjected to 20 years of Microsoft slowly reinventing the wheel starting with DOS, and they still haven't gotten it right.

We recall McDonalds toys with parts kids can bite off and choke on, but we let millions of lines of closed source code that does Lord-knows-what on various network ports run on nearly every machine in the universe with impunity.

-- Eric Michael Cordian 0+ O:.T:.O:. Mathematical Munitions Division "Do What Thou Wilt Shall Be The Whole Of The Law"

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