Saturday, February 14, 2009

What have we been talking about?

I love it when I find something in the media that we have covered in class first. When I saw this article at InformationWeek about microsoft offering bounties on worm writers I had to point it out.

So this is what it has come to, open warfare between the corporations and the hackers. Armies being assembled, monies being paid and combat out in the open. Cyberwarfare on a corporate scale.

What also stuck me was the numbers quoted

Symantec said in the past five days it has seen an average of almost 500,000 infections per day with W32.Downadup.A and more than 1.7 million infections per day with W32.Downadup.B.

Those numbers are per day, that means each day and every day. What is happening? I have heard some people compare the Web to the wild west, but this is far beyond that. It sounds more like a territorial war

According to Symantec, researchers have reverse-engineered the algorithm used to generate a daily list of 250 domains that the worm depends on to download updates. Armed with that knowledge, the coalition is taking control of the domains registered through coalition partners and using them to log and track infected systems. The group also is investigating domains overseen by registrars that aren't part of the coalition, though it's not clear how much leverage can be applied in such cases.

Seizing domains, collecting secrets, gathering intelligence, cutting off supplies and putting pressure on registrars sounds like a lot of military terminology to me. Are we surfing the Net or invading another country?

Watch yourself out there boys and girls. The Web can be a very dangerous place.

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