Legal Research

Eastern European Criminal Gangs, Moles, Pearl Harbor, and Rosa Parks, All In The Same Article?

Seriously, John Markoff’s article in today’s NY Times has some over-the-top quotes in it.  It’s about an Internet Worm known as Conficker or Downadup that’s making the rounds.  It’s hit at least 8 million PCs worldwide.  If your machine is infected, it’ll become part of a botnet:

“The program uses an elaborate shell-game-style technique to permit someone to command it remotely. Each day it generates a new list of 250 domain names. Instructions from any one of these domain names would be obeyed. To control the botnet, an attacker would need only to register a single domain to send instructions to the botnet globally, greatly complicating the task of law enforcement and security companies trying to intervene and block the activation of the botnet. Computer security researchers expect that within days or weeks the bot-herder who controls the programs will send out commands to force the botnet to perform some as yet unknown illegal activity.”

If you’re concerned about this, Symantec, the makers of Norton Antivirus, offer some comfort.  And here are my 7 computer security tips to live by.

I guess this isn’t a good time to mention that I am soooo glad we switched to Macs at home, is it?

Full post as published by Jenkins Webblits on January 23, 2009 (boomark / email).