Offmessage

Although, finding out that Stephen Fry shares my fears about Storm in particular and botnets in general was a little surprising.

Doug’s already mentioned this, but I thought I’d add my twopenn’orth.

I can’t help feeling that we are being rather dismissive of the Storm Worm.

Somewhere in the region of 2 million infected machines.  More computing power than any other grid out there. Responsible for a 30% increase in the total volume of spam in August.  Capable of taking out not only Universities and organisations, but potentially whole countries (Estonia got taken off line by non-automated activity, for example).

It is hard to imagine an organisation collecting two million zombie PCs just to send more spam.  At some point this massive acquisition of resources will stop and the network will be turned to some other use.  And let’s be honest, it’s unlikely to be looking for a cure for cancer, now is it?

It’s at this point I’d like to offer some solution, or point to action already underway, but right now, we’re pretty powerless.  This is likely to get messy.

I’ve mused before about the accidental exposure of our private lives online.  With the advent of Twitter, Plazes and the like this is only getting worse.  And what about Google Street View?  Mashable takes a look.

Teleportation gets closer still; Quantum entanglement transmits data 89 miles.  In reality more useful as an encryption mechanism than getting you to your Gran’s in double quick time, but still - getting Star Trek into a headline is never a bad thing.

Apparently 409 people have clicked that ad in the last 6 months. Um. I’m hoping they were all security researchers wondering what was going on, but I’m guessing not. Crikey.

Light switch. I think we all knew this was coming….

From stuff like this. I mean seriously. Hand over your social security number, credit card details and address and we’ll tell you if you’ve been scammed. Lordy! The answer’s yes. What a surprise!

Marvellous…

Hum… The BBC reports today that Nokia has announced that it, too, thinks that warchalking is theft.

Clearly this is a major thing for them, but surely this is somewhat akin to Microsoft telling us that holes in their software should not be exploited. If you’re using an insecure wireless LAN it really is your lookout, in the same way as if you have a confidential phone call in the middle of a library - anyone who wants to listen can. My mate Mr White has been involved in this - he finds networks all the time (it’s part of his job). Chalking is simply pointing out where they are. Christ, in some countries they do it anyway, and EasyNet are setting it up across Brighton now, for a small monthly fee.

If you can’t secure yourself, you shouldn’t be using the technology…

(At the moment warchalking.org is down - he was looking for a new host a couple of weeks ago - I assume that the bad press has caused him to get kicked off)