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 ...
They're socialist morons, anyway.
There's already an Internet 2. It's a super-high-speed network used to link laboratories, research groups, and some universities.
Yes, the students at the universities have downloaded mp3s. Yes, the RIAA sued them. Some things never change.
The cause of Internet malware is 50% Windows' insecurity, 50% dumb users taking advantage of that insecurity. Pure and simple.
This is fix for too much unfiltered information.
Yes, the Internet is not the problem. It's the operating system at the end user that's the problem. Major blunders from Redmond...
We can thank Bill Gates and Microsoft for that.
Wanna bet M$ tries to propose a new Internet standard?
Almost all the zombie-computers (viral/trojan laden computers that are used by spammers worldwide to proliferate their crud) that display an IPA who are used by spammers are either: public proxies or connected to an educational network of various types.
Most educational networks have lax security -- surprising, but true -- compared with private enterprise (still also guilty but not as pervasively...hotels and public trading pc terminals are also among the worst zombie-affecting).
Many of the educational nets in places like Taiwan and China and Southeast Asia, Britain, etc., are all identifiable as having spammer-zombies.
So, actually, anticipating public-use pcs (that includes educational nets) to be more secure is foolish, given the higher degree of personal unaccountability that affects many terminals.
Congress needs to focus on increasing and applying penalties to those who abuse the internet, and, applying incentives to those who ensure safety and security.
I know I spend a great deal of every single day of computing taking care of security issues and managing website spammer and otherwise hack attempts. It's very time consuming and seems nearly endless in intensity and troubles.
I agree that the internet is akin to a Sixties Flower Child mentality, in that there IS an expectation that if one is nice and well behaved, that all will go reasonably well. It's the farthest thing from the truth there is.
Spamming today has taken on the proportions of terrorism. It's no longer about getting or selling goods/services but about harassing sites and site authors, as in the blogger spammer/trackback/comment/referral spamming issues, which are substantially difficult to meet and overcome. The onslaught in those efforts is being done by only a few extremely terrible sources and yet they have managed to ruin about thirty/forty percent of most site resources each and every day for everyone who maintains a blog, or offers commenting features, much moreso publishes an email address.
And, they remain without penalty or even reprimand. I'll never understand how such a huge problem can remain without so much as a request to cease/desist by some form of government or another. It's tragic that it even takes place, much more so can remain as virulent as it is and yet never be penalized for all the damages ongoing.
DING! DING! DING! We have a winner!
Educational networks are definitely a vulnerable point, but it was reported a week or two ago that AOL is actually the home of the zombie PC as far as malware generated from individual ISPs goes.
Whoda thunk.
Yeah, wouldn't surprise me. I was earlier writing about my own sites' stats and the problems I've had and identified, caused by whom. I've actually done WHOIS on each and every IPA over time and the public proxies, africanet and many in Southeast Asia, the Netherlands and elsewhere around Europe is the pattern I've found.
Almost all of what I find, however, is generated from outside the U.S., but the Mexico proxies and a few of their larger domains are by far the absolute worst, most offending range.
But, all used by spammers from elsewhere, but it's dreadful to what extent Mexico's proxies allow the crud to spew.
Owners/end users are responsible for maintaining good security but what I think it probably is is that AOL makes their sales pitch (as does now Cox Communications) as an ISP based upon them providing accounts with 'security suite' softwares and such, and although it's better than nothing, it's not as current and and certainly not as uptodate and thorough as is privately purchased softwares for that purpose....so users naively rely on thier freebie 'security' offerings by the larger ISPs and don't realize they're easily infected, and thus, infect others in similar situations.
Everyone should be using, at least, Norton/Symantec for starters but many don't. And those who don't, allow all the problems to continue...every blasted infected PC then generates crud all over the internet and the harms proliferate.
I know a lot of end users claim innocence but it's really the responsibility of everyone who owns, uses a computer, to keep it secure. And not to rely on any security program that is "free" because they just pass the buck by the ISPs who provide them.
Southeast Asia and Mexico I can believe. Europe... I thought everyone there was more sophisticated than us hick Americans!
End users are a definite problem. They think security is IT's responsibility. Sorry, guys, but IT can't prevent you from opening that spam email with the data thief worm in it.
On a side note: I find Kaspersky AV and NOD32 to be far superior to Norton's products. Norton's home stuff is just terrible, and the way it integrates itself into a system should classify it as low-level malware. Norton Corporate is better, but I'd still rather go with Kaspersky.
I wonder how much of this crap would go away if companies used Macs for workstations.
I run a mailserver which handles email for about 100 active domains, and it is simply ridiculous the extent to which the spammers' network of compromised machines circles the globe.
I saw the same piece of spam from the same spammer being attempted to be delivered to a user - one IP was in Japan, one IP was in the US, and one was in Poland. (All were rejected.)
Is she kidding?
Howlin: "Is she kidding?"
LOL! Translation: THOSE people are using the internet to achieve their goals and exchange ideas even better than we can. How can we advance our agenda when they are educating everyone?
You're exactly right. She sounds vaguely like Hillary!
I completely agree about Kaspersky. I didn't mention it earlier because it's not something the general user considers (but I do and it is about the best antiviral available, in my view). Most people can go find Norton and/or McAfee, though. Either of those last two are better than relying on the freebie suite softwares that ISPs are starting to offer *for, hey, security!*. It's disappointing how many users I read who say that they use those and those only "because they're free" and because they assume their ISP is looking out for them. Hardly...
I mean, try asking your ISP to replace your hardrive when it's ruined by a worm.
Meaning, people who rely on what their ISPs offer for security are really either lazy or very dim.
I completely agree about Kaspersky. I didn't mention it earlier because it's not something the general user considers (but I do and it is about the best antiviral available, in my view). Most people can go find Norton and/or McAfee, though. Either of those last two are better than relying on the freebie suite softwares that ISPs are starting to offer *for, hey, security!*. It's disappointing how many users I read who say that they use those and those only "because they're free" and because they assume their ISP is looking out for them. Hardly...
I mean, try asking your ISP to replace your hardrive when it's ruined by a worm.
Meaning, people who rely on what their ISPs offer for security are really either lazy or very dim.
Yeah, and Norton Professional, which includes the full array of features/programs. I've used that to good success but far prefer Kaspersky for reliability. But, Norton Professional does a great (enough) job for most users, if they use malware programs, also.
To my view, the problem is the creeps who write and generate viral programs and spyware, and spam.
But, I completely agree that the responsibility for security is on the end user.
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