Re: PhD Topic suggestions

On Fri, 19 Dec 2003 10:26:36 +0000
Fridrik Skulason <[email protected]> wrote:

> 
> > Yes, it is for this reason alone that this wont work.  
> 
> Not *alone*.  Another reason would be that anyone stupid enough to "update" machines
> without authorization would be in violation of the laws in many places.
> 
> > Now it would be nice to have a worm that could identify infected or vulnerable 
> > computers and inform the user with an email or something and maybe shutting down
> > the computer but that would be exploited by spammers at the very least.
> 
> It would not be "nice".  It would be incredibly idiotic.

Yea, I realize it would be idiotic to write something like this or use one that is already available for all of the same reasons a patching worm would be idiotic.  My point was it would be nice to be able to take them out of service for the sake of the rest of us without modifying or damaging them.  I know there is no real way of doing that without causing more trouble than you solve.  

During the nimda attack, I tracked IPs of all the hits I took and checked out some of the boxes from which a large number of hits came from.  If the IP resolved or it had a contact email on a web site, I emailed them.  I suppose I emailed about 20 of them and got responses from a few who were unaware of the problem.  Most of the problems came from users with no registered domain and no web site though.  But if people used a script that automated emailing like that, it would choke the email servers along with the already choking nimda traffic.   

> 
> -- 
> Fridrik Skulason   Frisk Software International   phone: +354-540-7400
> Author of F-PROT   E-mail: [email protected]       fax:   +354-540-7401
> 
> 
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