Re: Wired mag article on spammers playing traceroute games with trojaned boxes

[Avleen Vig <lists-nanog () silverwraith com>]

On Thu, Oct 09, 2003 at 07:44:35PM -0500, Laurence F. Sheldon, Jr. wrote:
> > Two-three years ago the warnings were ignored because it was only
> > IRC. Now it's only spam.  What does it take to make the Network
> > Operators and NANOG decide that things that are a "very bad thing" on
> > one protocol generally can bite you later on another if you ignore it
> > because it's only <insert your least favorite program or protocol
> > here>?
>
> I believe that to be one of the most succint summaries of the issues
> as I have read.

Not only that, but it's arguable that the problem is now significantly
worse.
Now IRC networks are *still* under attack, AND spam is a problem.
And reading from the wired article, hard-to-trace, possibly very illegal
websites are in the mix also.
What next, national security compromised because someone created a
massive P2P system with all these trojaned systems, and uploaded the
list of names of CIA operatives? Nice.
It's not inconceivable.

Personally I'm in favour of specific port filtering, and charging a
(small) premium ($10 a month?) for be able to run servers on residential
broadband connections.
Aunt Maggie in Florida doesn't NEED to run a server of any kind, and it
would probably make my life easier trying to solve problems for her.

-- 
Avleen Vig
Systems Administrator
Personal: www.silverwraith.com
EFnet:    irc.mindspring.com (Earthlink user access only)