Barry Shein wrote:
On May 29, 2008 at 06:46 joelja@bogus.com (Joel Jaeggli) wrote:
Dorn Hetzel wrote:
Yeah, there was a day when anyone could buy a pickup truck full of ammonium nitrate fertilizer from a random feed store and not attract any attention at all, now, maybe not. Just like port 25, it has plenty of legitimate uses, and some more problematic ones.
Equating port 25 use with domestic terrorism is specious.
Ammonium nitrate requires requires some care in handling regardless of your intentions,see for exmple the oppau or texas city disasters.
And how different is that from the million+ strong zombie botnets? Who owns (not pwns) those zombie'd systems and what were their intentions?
Well let's see. The texas city disaster is/was considered the worst industrial accident in american history. 581 people killed by an explosive yield of about 2 kilotons. The secondary effects includes fires in many of the chemical facilities in Galveston and a swath of destruction that reached up to 40 miles inland... http://www.local1259iaff.org/disaster.html So no, I don't think internet attached hosts can casually equated with the destructive potential of a pile of fertilizer at least not in the context described.