Comments on: Sasser author honoured

By: Reader's Write

Reader's Write — Wed, 29 Sep 2004 16:13:24 +0000

It’s sort of like Time making the Ayatollah man of the year (I think in the 30’s Hitler was once Time’s man of the year) – It’ s not necessarily an “honor” to say you’ve “had an impact,” but given that all the other person’s mentioned were people who had a positive impact, it’s a pr trick.

By: Reader's Write

Reader's Write — Wed, 29 Sep 2004 13:53:03 +0000

And from the point of view of the security companies
a continued stream of dangerous virus is necessary
to keep them in business.

If there were less exploits and malicious code,
they could less justify the need for their services.

Problems for some make opportunities for others.

By: Reader's Write

Reader's Write — Wed, 29 Sep 2004 13:23:44 +0000

so everytime a “bully” comes along and kicks over your sandcastle you should award them a medal and blame the bucket/shovel manufacturer for creating a cruddy product?

truth is there was a patch for sasser before there was an exploit for it. So to blame microcrap for a crappy product is mute in this case. Missing the point of why it’s wrong to award prizes to people who take advantage of vulnerbilities, regardless of what they are. By doing so you send the message it’s ok to fuck with someones computer – I’m sorry that to me is the wrong message to be sending to these script kiddies. Just like hiring them sends the wrong message. In fact a recent virus that was released contained a message, “looking 4 work” (along those lines).

And it wasn’t a few IT’s who had to patch a few computers, it was millions of computers infected costing millions of dollars in time and energy to clean systems out and patch them.

I don’t have much sympathy for people who don’t run windows update often enough and get infected (cause it can be put on automatic update) but I refuse to believe someone who takes advantage of others should be awarded any prize much less being on a list of those considered for one, no matter how crappy the product is.

How up-to-date are you in regards to computer security? these days you almost have to be a dectective/IT/sys admin/security guru to keep up with all of the exploits out there. How often do you read bugtraq? Would you even know where to begin to deal with some of the more malicious malware that is out there?

-anne

By: Reader's Write

Reader's Write — Wed, 29 Sep 2004 10:35:44 +0000

I don’t agree… yeah sure sasser was inconvienient, but it wasn’t exactly destructive, was it? It only degraded performance, took some PC’s offline, tried to stop itself from being removed, but as far as I know it didn’t destroy any data…

So a few system operators had to work out how to clean it from their systems. SO WHAT? Should the people of the world keep their heads in the sand, thinking they are secure, until someone writes a virus that actually does contain a destructive payload? I’d rather have to deal with cleaning up sasser than have to deal with complete loss of my data and/or loss of all the money held in my electronic bank accounts.

By writing Sasser, Sven has helped people become more aware of security on the internet, and shown how vunerable Micro$oft’s shoddy software is – that is certainly a “driving force”. Bill Gates should be the one tared and feathered for selling us an operating system that allowed this to happen.

By: Reader's Write

Reader's Write — Wed, 29 Sep 2004 08:27:01 +0000

If the “update” is supposed to mitigate Jaschan’s inclusion, it fails. In my opinion, he is on the list as a pr trick.

By: Reader's Write

Reader's Write — Wed, 29 Sep 2004 07:39:03 +0000

exactly how was he a “driving force”? The whole idea baffles me. I find it ludicris that someone who had a hand in reeking havoc upon the internet should get an honour – these judges smoking something funny?

Am I the only one who thinks that people who take advantage of exploits should be tared and feathered?