09.24.09
Gemini version available ♊︎Pentagon Recognises the Threat of Windows Botnets
Summary: Security news from the past couple of days can shed light on the severity of this zombie problem and its cause
WHILST Australia considers banning insecure Windows from the Internet in order to curb Windows botnets, the United States prepares for the worst having seen entire nations besieged by such botnets, even recently. David Gerard has passed a pointer to Wired Magazine, which outlines the Pentagon’s approach (physically bombing the botmaster/s is also a possibility which they consider because life is at stake).
The Pentagon already employs legions of elite hackers trained in cyberwarfare. But they mostly play defense, and that’s what Naval Postgraduate School professor John Arquilla wants to change. He’d like the US military’s coders to team up with network specialists abroad to form a global geek squad. Together, they could launch preemptive online strikes to head off real-world battles.
SJVN has this new article which helps highlight why GNU/Linux is inherently more secure (even the FBI cannot secure Windows, as opposed to back-dooring it). Oiaohm gave us the pointer. “Why items like Ubuntu win on security,” according to Oiaohm, is that they make it “simpler to update everything.” Another new article from SJVN speaks about viruses that are distributed via E-mail and it is worth adding that such E-mail (malicious SPAM) almost always originates from Windows botnets.
In particular, it seems like a day doesn’t go by that I get a Hallmark e-card in my e-mail, and every last one of them has been spam message bearing malware or an attempt to get me to link to a malicious Website. I’m not the only one.
Had people been in control of their PCs, then suppressing any flood of SPAM would be tremendously easier (and trillions of dollars would be saved too). █
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Needs Sunlight said,
September 24, 2009 at 9:00 am
Windows botnets are just a symptom. Does the pentagon recognize the underlying cause of the threat, that of people who actively or passively promote the use of Windows and M$ products?