on Thu, Dec 02, 2004 at 08:58:03PM +0000, Christopher L. Morrow wrote:
On Thu, 2 Dec 2004, Steven Champeon wrote:
on Thu, Dec 02, 2004 at 02:56:29PM -0500, Hannigan, Martin wrote:
Possibly. What will happen if the Lycos botnet gets hijacked?
The conversations between the clients and the servers don't appear to be keyed. If a million clients got owned, it would be the equivalent of an electronic Bubonic Plague with no antidote.
You mean, like the existing botnets we already know exist but are already under the control of spammers?
What's the difference? Why is everyone so upset about Lycos and nobody seems to be doing much of anything about the /existing botnets/, which conservative estimates[1] already put at anywhere from 1-3K per botnet to upwards of 1-5M hosts total[2]?
perhaps the difference is 'reponsible people' don't go out and recruit botnets... Lycos, as a corporate entity with it's business model dependent upon the health and wellbeing of the Internet would try to be 'responsible', or so I would have thought.
I agree. I also think it's up to the companies providing the Internet connectivity to the non-Lycos-"owned" botnets to prevent such activity from affecting others.
arguing that there are murderers and rapists out there and that 'nothing is being done' is hardly reason to become one yourself.
I couldn't agree more that vigilantism isn't the answer. My earlier remarks were directed to the shock and awe evident in the possibility that - via Lycos - there might be, heaven forbid, /large numbers of computers under the control of spammers, that could be used in spamming and abuse/. All I was pointing out was that, surprise, surprise, there already are. So why anyone thinks Lycos' botnet being hacked is /any different/ from /the current situation/ is utterly beyond my ken. Why would any spammer bother to hack Lycos' botnet? They /already have their own/. -- hesketh.com/inc. v: +1(919)834-2552 f: +1(919)834-2554 w: http://hesketh.com join us! http://hesketh.com/about/careers/account_manager.html join us!