Under DOS attack and temporarily silenced. The blogosphere takes notice:
Bryan of Why Now? and whig of Cannablog explain.
Mustang Bobby of Bark Bark Woof Woof keeps track of the bloggers.
The police in Los Angeles have begun to impound people's cars who drag race on streets. They then FLATTEN the cars. Maybe when (not if) they catch the hacker responsible, they take his computer out on to the street and drive over it a few times....
10 comments:
I don't know the particulars of this DOS attack on Shakesville, but if it's of the distributed kind, one could end up flattening the computers of a lot of innocent people whose computers were co-opted over the net and harnessed to create the attack. Of course, those people used no a/v software to protect against such worms, so I guess they're not completely innocent.
I'm glad to see that LAPD is its usual sterling, law-abiding, situation-defusing self. Next: contests among kids to build drag racers sturdy enough to break the crushers. This cannot end well. One would think LAPD operated in some city in Texas. :)
Lol! Wasn't it the CIA who just announced a huge percentage of computers on the net had been zombified?
And yes, I'm sure the LAPD is taking notes from Texas...
What percentage of non-Windows computers are zombified?
To ask the question is almost to answer it.
Should we consider blocking Internet Explorer, or better -- redirecting all IE traffic to a site that explains why people should be using Firefox or something else other than Microsoft's browser?
(I realize that won't solve the problem, per se. It's not IE that's attacking, and it's not directly Microsoft, but Microsoft is indirectly enabling this by limiting their security patches to registered copies of XP and while I appreciate their desire to make more billions of dollars than they already make, it's a pretty hostile act upon the net.)
That decision by Microsoft is passing strange to me, whig. It can only reinforce their reputation as vendors of a system that sacrifices security for... what? profit? Maybe; I'm not sure. But it is not only a bad thing for the net; it is bad for Microsoft.
Regarding IE: that's a problem for a web developer, which I am on my lucky days. I (we? I've never really known what you develop, whig) have no choice but to use IE to test sites. The expectation is that everything I deliver will work on IE; indeed, nonstandard bastard though it is, sometimes the ONLY criterion is that a site shall work on IE. Clients can be educated on the virtues of standards and security, but often enough their customers cannot. (I personally use Firefox on both Windows and Linux machines.)
ellroon, a few years ago, we had a cop who went wild in such a situation, arresting hundreds of teens and young adults in a parking lot near where racing was taking place. Many of the kids were customers of a club (restaurant? not sure) next door, and had nothing to do with the bad behavior. Of course most of the charges were dropped, but think of the hassle for kids, parents, courts etc. I read recently that the cop's suit to be allowed to return to work was denied by the courts. Good thing they weren't crushing cars that night!
Steve, I write passing strange things. Data compressors, nameservers, and things that I fancy having like my Chromosphere musical language project.
I don't accept work which is antithetical to my principles. This means I don't make much money, but I have a clear conscience.
whig, I accept work you probably wouldn't. I do have limits: I don't do weapons-related programming, though I did work on some nutrition-related s/w a version of which was eventually sold to the US Army. (I don't feel the least bit bad about that. If I helped build weapons, I'd feel bad about that. YMMV.)
But I've done work for a major oil company in the past, mostly HS&E stuff (health, safety and environment). We all have limits, and I believe I can truthfully say I haven't accepted work contrary to my principles. Maybe I just haven't gotten hungry enough yet..
Thanks for all that you are, whig and Steve! I don't know if I'd be as careful with my conscience if my livelihood were on the line, greed is a big factor with me... That and eating.
Spent yesterday and will be today working on two new computers, installing Windows XP. Talk about intrusive...
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