Posted on 06/25/2005 9:54:09 PM PDT by Crackingham
Hackers, viruses, worms, spam, spyware and phishing sites have proliferated to the point where it's nearly impossible for most computer users to go online without falling victim to them. Last year, the Carnegie Mellon University CERT Coordination Center logged 3,780 new computer security vulnerabilities, compared with 1,090 in 2000 and 171 in 1995. Computer security firm Symantec Corp. over the past decade has catalogued 11,000 vulnerabilities in 20,000 technologies, affecting 2,000 vendors.
"I'm very pessimistic about it all," said Haugsness, who has worked for the storm center for two years. "There are huge problems and outages all the time, and I see things getting worse."
Originally developed by the Defense Department, the Internet is now a global electronic communications network made up of hundreds of millions of computers, servers and other devices run by various governments, academic institutions, companies and individuals. Because no one entity owns it, the network depends on goodwill to function smoothly.
The Internet has become so huge -- and so misused -- that some worry that its power to improve society has been undermined. Now a movement is gathering steam to upgrade the network, to create an Internet 2.0. How, or even if, that could be done is a subject of much debate. But experts are increasingly convinced that the Internet's potential will never be met unless it's reinvented.
"The Internet is stuck in the flower-power days of the '60s during which people thought the world would be beautiful if you are just nice," said Karl Auerbach, a former Cisco Systems Inc. computer scientist who volunteers with several engineering groups trying to improve the Internet.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
I hope the new version comes with cupholders.
The Internet Protocol is fairly sound. The problems stem from how it is actually used, not how it has to be used. You could completely swap out that layer with something else and this problem would not go away. And as it happens, a lot of the backbone networks that the Internet runs on are Layer-2 anyway -- no IP in sight.
Thanks for the Kaspersky recommendation.
I used to run a successful network-design company (before 9/11). Friends and family members are always asking me for my "computer expertise." My own answer is to use Unix-based OSes (I use a Mac for Microsoft Office type stuff and general productivity, and OSX Server on XServes, Linux, and OpenBSD on servers). I have de-malwared more PC's than I care to think about.
But for most people, a Mac is too odd (they want all the videos they get emailed to just run, and they want to use pirate software from their friends). So I set them up to fight the defensive fight with AV and anti-adware stuff (Spypot and Ad-Aware).
I do have some WIndows PCs but use them strictly for Microsoft Flight Simulator and some other aviation apps -- I do not attach them to the Internet.
About 1/3 of the traffic coming into my network lab, which I still have as a toy, is coming from zombied PCs. (most of the traffic is intitiated from inside the lab).
Worth noting that many corporations don't consider spyware bad. For instance, Verizon, Vonage, and all the online travel agencies (Orbitz, Expedia, Travelocity etc). support spyware.
The answer is probably to make the individual the owner of his own data. You want my phone number? I get to set the price. Ditto for my credit information. That utopian idea'd never pass because the criminals and corporate greedheads that profit from this information can buy the criminals and personal greedheads that inhabit Congress.
d.o.l.
Criminal Number 18F
We need a government agency to review and approve all internet transmissions.
2 solutions: A. Make the deliberate spreading of these thing punishable by 10 years in prison. Countries that don't prosecute get punished. B. Get a Mac.
Big problem with (A.) is that many of the problems are created by people in areas outside the U.S.
I would very much like to see some sort of 'anti spam" or "anti viral viral anti" thing by which any viral/worm program, particularly, could be equally matched with some fry-the-antagonists'-wiring action.
I'm not an advocate of harming anyone just because, but there really needs to be some return measure available to end users that meets and exceeds the threat. Something that, so to speak, infects the infectors, moreorless like a "drug" therapy for an infection: send/generate an infectious agent over the internet, receive a dose of the cure by immediate action, from each and every machine targeted.
Some sort of "cure" based upon already proven theory of healing, so to speak.
But I DO like the idea of ten years in jail for spammers and writers of malicious code.
Who the heck ever said it was supposed to improve society? If anything, the misuse of the Internet should be held up as an example of human nature at its most raw and basic.
Yeah, of course. I've used Norton Professional for many years, works great for me. The other one being discussed is just more comprehensive, but Norton Professional (includes Antiviral and Norton's firewall, which is more extensive than the one offered with Windows XP) works very well otherwise.
Norman, not Norton.
BMFL
How about the freebie from AVG (Grisoft)?
In my experience, with antiviral protections, they have to be current. Updated as often as necessary to counter emerging threats.
Freebies often are not updated and currently updated...they issue definitions and those remain until "next" updated, whenever someone gets around to it or whoever issues the freebie updates their definitions (many servers are maintained in this same way, which is why so many viral attachments and such are able to proliferate through email -- because various servers aren't currently maintained as to antiviral definitions).
So, you get what you pay for, literally, in this area. Paying people is a good thing when it provides incentive for a better-than-everyone-else standard, in my experience.
I guess my point is, virus, trojan horse, worms, etc are a form of theft. If your neighborhood was suddenly over run by people who were constantly trying to break in to your home, you would first get a gun (virus protection) then you would demand that the police get the bad guys. We don't really demand that the police get the bad guys who are infecting our computers, we simply buy more and better firewalls and virus protection. If some of these punks overseas saw their hacker buddies going to prison for 10 to 20 years they might sit up and take notice. They are nothing more than sociopaths anyway, and deserve to be locked up.
Well, I completely agree with ya'!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.