Wednesday, August 27, 2003

Thanks, Sobig -- 10:48 am CST, Update by J.t.Qbe

I'd personally like to thank those behind the various Sobig worms which have made life so pleasant lately. The VPN into work has been snail-slow for the past week; the mail server simply doesn't respond half of the time and my terminal sessions take .5 to 30 seconds to respond to anything. Yep, I'd like to thank the Sobig authors, preferably in a dark alley somewhere with some brass knuckles.

And I'd like to thank Microsoft for making stuff like this possible. When will people finally say "enough" and say good-bye to Microsoft? Never: most are suckers for Microsoft's slick marketing. Bah.

A.T. Hun comments: While MS certainly deserves a giant raspberry for a lot of this, the bigger question might be, "When are people going to learn to patch their systems?" Joe User needs to figure out that he has to visit Windows Update to patch his system regularly, or better yet, make sure MS informs him whenever a patch is released. I subscribe to Slackware's security advisory list. As soon as an update is released, I snag it and install it. Until people can learn that (and MS can release patches that won't hose systems), problems like this will only get worse as broadband proliferates.

The Master comments: You know, we can rant about this all we like, but we KNOW what "Windows Update" is, and we KNOW about "security advisories". I personally know people who wonder "will that worm thingie they're talking about on TV affect me?", and then go back to watching the tube. Let's face it, either (a) Microsoft will need to ram the patches down every Windows user's throat, in which case the privacy and security people will scream, (b) ISPs will need to properly border and egress filter their networks, and properly reverse DNS check e-mail against sender domain, and require properly labelled and formed packets both IN and OUT of their networks, in which case the privacy people and ISP network admins who don't give a damn about security will scream, (c) ISPs require up-to-date virus software and patches on PCs, in which case privacy people and users will scream about money and time and confusion, (d) take all the damn PCs away from people until they get properly security conscious (yeah, that'll happen), or (e) Microsoft be fined for every system intrusion due to coding neglegence. Now, (e) may not happen in the USA, where any good company can and will deny responsability for everything, but it will be about the only way anything will be properly repaired in Windows.

News for 08/27/2003

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