Analysis of the attack
Now I understand the blip in the financials. Why confidence in technology dried up.
We evolved computer viruses and hackers to compensate us with vulnerabilities we never expected to have, perhaps as some of us became intollerably rich.
So what can we do to evolve further. How about looking at what the hackers do, and learning from them?
The confrontational approach to dealing with terrorism seems to work, but seems to destroy evidence, and infurate people into suicide bombings.
It is Jonestown on a giant scale and using flyspray to eradicate them is a solution, but you know how the flys come back every year?
Preventing cultures from getting rich may be another way, but surely the Borg example is the best. Make us more like them where it counts, and make them more like us where it also counts.
With what's going down in Washington these days, I would imagine that the huge growth in nastiness of hack attacks on many popular platforms is related to the above, rather than an outbreak of grossout spottiness in the McDonald's munching set.
It has been really interesting to reinfect my system with the attacking files and watch it spend ages doing absolutely masses of things on the system. If I was writing a virus I wouldn't go to town and make myself so obvious to just wipe a server for no reason and neither would any hacker worth their sneeze. Is it more likely someone who wants to know what am doing? What if it was a government and they had laws that allowed them to do this? Or if it was Al Queada? Now that is what I see as the blip. No sooner than you trust your system, and a new set of circumstances exist.
Perhaps the true glory of an Open Source system over something a hidden system is that I can actually see what the hacker is doing, and quantify the damage.
It is important - vital - these days to keep Linux and Windows up to date with patches. We don't even know what these do either, and if their release notes match. At least Open Source patching makes it more difficult for the seriously diseased person to invade you.
It is strange to note that a leading Anti virus product bears the name of an antibiotic which we all know are not much cop when you have a viral infection, not in the medical world anyway. Immunisation is the key to defeating the security impasse. Not a patch city.
dshield.org deserves your donations.
Hey - make the web a safe place to have fun again and respect our rights to privacy, individuality and honesty. It is stupid to risk your business hacking into other websites unless you want the FBI to eat you for breakfast. What do you think US$40 billion is buying but our talent, that the fallen stockmarket can no longer afford. Well those of us that are employed by a national pride seriously dented by its intellegence shortcomings.
Only the real snake oil can save us now.