Worms nibble away at ISP profits

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Combination of factors...

IMHO, it gets down to a number of solutions, of which any one would reduce the proliferation of viruses and worms.

1. Social re-engineering

Too many people trust what they receive. Although Kevin Mitnick's technical expertise was good, his ability to play on the vulnerabilities of people's personalities was better.

If we were all running Linux on Intel boxes, stupid trusting people would still run attachments containing viruses and worms.

2. OS re-engineering

Regardless of the amount of time put into closing security holes in the OS or in an application, tightly integrating applications with the OS (Microsoft) will always leave vulnerabilities.

3. IP and SMTP re-engineering

This is probably the most advantageous and difficult solution. As long as hackers and virus writers can hide behind the anonymity of TCP/IP and email header spoofing, they will remain untraceable and can continue their dirty work. But Pandora's box has been opened, and getting the world to move to something other than SMTP will be difficult if not impossible, especially since companies would rather try to make money off of solutions like firewalls and virus scanners.

Just my opinions, and not those of my family and friends.

Posted by: BitFiddler   Posted on: 03/04/04 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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