[thelist] RE: [OT] blaster worm punishment

[Kristian Rink]

Hi Steven, list...

On Sun, 30 Jan 2005 12:29:46 -0800 (PST)
Steven Streight <vaspersthegrate at yahoo.com> wrote:

> To say "I'm glad there are worms and Trojans out there, so the stupid
> public and companies too cheap to hire good IT admins will be forced
> to consider non-Microsoft solutions", well, to me, it sounds identical
> to this spurious, dishonorable argument:
>  
> "I'm glad women get raped, because it will force them to stop dressing
> like Britney Spears and distracting me from my work designing frumpy
> matronly female fashions"

Basically you're right, and yet I can't agree with you. We indeed
_should_ see that there is a threat in each and every sort of worm,
virus or Trojan that is out there. Yet, quite a lot of companies
definitely do way _too_ less while talking about IT security in general.
There's another point: Imagine running a vulnerable system that is
available online and being victim of sort of a DDoS performed by
thousands of computers which, poorly administered and/or equipped with
totally insecure software, were taken over by a worm and then used as
"serving zombies" in a DDoS. Of course, the one initially responsible is
the one who actually unleashed this sort of havoc upon mankind, but so
are the admins of each and every site that has been compromised and
abused in this situation. People are responsible for things they do, and
so they are for things they don't do (like securing ther network or
computers). We're not just talking about "good IT admins" or
"non-Microsoft solutions", we're rather talking about security awareness
and _everything_ that might include. In some fields (firewalling
software, server software, ...), non-Microsoft strategies might be a
good approach (because Open Source software simply is easier to examine
and to have a look at in case you suspect it to do something you don't
want), but having competent people maintaining your systems should be
just common. You'll not run a transport company with truck drivers that
never actually have driven a truck, would you?

Cheers,
Kris



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