James Steele

All things dotNet running through my veins

The Internet Is a Very Sick Place

After reading The Internet Is a Very Sick Place  @ Wired.com, it seems clear to me that the industry is failing miserably at learning from its mistakes.  These neanderthal authors keep nailing us with the same old out of the box, let's see if this will work again, I have 5 minutes with nothing better to do so let's create some havoc, type viruses. We are not even nipping at their tails... not even forcing them to be creative and stay one step ahead of us. No. Instead we keep bending over and taking the same beating with same stick, over and over.

Perhaps I am expecting too much, or perhaps the industry realizes there is more money to be made by not addressing the fundamental shortcomings of our software/hardware.

Or could it be that “Joe“ users out there are so brain dead and incompetent, that regardless of efforts to curb these vulnerabilities, we are hopelessley doomed to the reality that they will always be suckered into propagating these viruses?

Am I alone here? Should we not be doing a better job?

The year 2003 has been deemed the worst in computer-virus history by security experts, despite the fact that worm and virus writers displayed no significant technological progress in the code of their newest nasty little creations.

But why bother to develop new tricks when the old ones work so well? This year computer worms managed to shut down ATMs, slow airline and train travel by infecting reservation and signaling systems, clog emergency phone services, and crash networks controlling critical systems at hospitals and at least one nuclear power plant.

Comments

Alain Lavoie said:

Very interesting blog James. It seems odd, even silly that we can't seem to stop computer viruses yet looking at the wolrd around us, this sort of activity is ubiquitous. In a way, a computer virus is simply an extension of other kind of crimes, like terrorist where the aim of the perpetrator is to curb an existing process, wheter human, political or technological in nature. So deep down, it's the old survival game all over again, the predator/prey dance. Looking at nature for enlightment, we discover a positive side to this seemingly pointless dance. It is called the "evolutionnary arm race". In this race, the structure evolves more resistant to attacks and the attacks evolve more effective against the structures. So in the case of computer and viruses, we have to understand that it takes time for our structures to adapt to the threat. Code Signing is a good step forward, deterrence through law enforcement is another one but when a 12 years old is the evil-doer, what should we do? You can use software protection to minimize your risk but like in real life, if you want complete protection, abstinence may be your best bet.
When looking at the history of human behavior and the risk we take with our very life, I seriously doubt the latter solution will ever be a realistic one. It is far more likely that computer viruses become akin to something like the common cold. We all know it's out there but are willing to take the risk simply because in the end, it's all worth it.

Alain
# January 23, 2004 10:38 AM
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