Google worm targets AOL, Yahoo

TalkBack 12 of 19:

Next »

« Previous

• Thread View
• Flat View

Old School, Yo

Repeat after me: THIS IS A SERVER WORM. Microsoft is irrelevant to this issue. So is *nix, strictly speaking: It's based on a vulnerability in PHP, and it's not clear to me that the same vulnerability doesn't (well, didn't) exist in PHP implementations on Windows.

This is old-school, updated for new times: In 1994, someone might have written this to use Gopher or WAIS or Archie. They'd have had to be smarter coders, but it could have been done.

What's changed is that it's now a lot easier to code this stuff. A mediocre scripter could hack this together in a week or less of spare time; a good coder in just a few hours. Back in the day it would have taken much more skill and time.

It's not so much the existence of Google as it is the orderly nature of their API and result-sets. Since those aren't Google-exclusives by any stretch of the imagination, it's a simple tweak to make the worm use AOL, Yahoo, MSN, Mamma, Dogpile.... you name it.

For that same reason, server-side search blocking is potentially a baby:bathwater solution. So all those folks out there blaming Google (or Yahoo or AOL) for not reacting quickly enough are really not thinking this through. Yes, there are trivially simple solutions that can disable searchability; but any solutions that weren't draconian and counter-productive could easily be coded around.

Posted by: escoles@...   Posted on: 12/28/04 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

Alert moderator to an offensive message

Subscribe to this discussion via Email or RSS

SponsoredWhite Papers, Webcasts, and Downloads

• Building the Virtualized Enterprise with VMware Iinfrastructure VMware VMware virtualization software has been adopted by over 120,000 enterprise ... Download Now
• The True Costs of Virtual Server Solutions VMware In an economic environment that is repeatedly heralding the message "do ... Download Now
• Five Steps to Determine When to Virtualize YourServers VMware Server virtualization isn't just for big companies. Entry-level ... Download Now