Machine Wars
The battle between good and evil in cyberspace is increasingly fought with automated tools
Thursday, January 20, 2005 by BX | Discussion: WinCustomize News
Welcome to the machine wars, where zombie armies--computers compromised and subverted by hackers--churn out spam and malicious code in relentless raids on the PCs of home users and the commercial world's IT systems. Spammers are bypassing similar image-recognition challenges, used by Internet service providers to prevent bulk registration of E-mail accounts, with scripts that trick Web surfers into solving picture puzzles for them. And 24 hours a day, bots search the Net for vulnerable systems.
Last year, a computer worm that conducts automated reconnaissance appeared; it uses the Google Inc. search engine to automatically find Web sites running vulnerable bulletin-board software and then defaces them. The financial-services industry noticed a spike last fall in phishing attempts to steal money from customers' accounts and put the blame on a new toolkit that made it easier to set up such scams.
The good guys are fighting back. One means is through better blocking of spam, the river on which many automated attacks travel. Another is turning the network itself into a security device. AT&T, the largest carrier of IP data nationally, each day analyzes 1.7 petabytes of information that passes through its IP backbone, looking for new attacks so it can teach its network to spot and combat them through proprietary algorithms without human intervention.
These are only exerpts from InformationWeek's exclusive article written by Thomas Claburn.
Last year, a computer worm that conducts automated reconnaissance appeared; it uses the Google Inc. search engine to automatically find Web sites running vulnerable bulletin-board software and then defaces them. The financial-services industry noticed a spike last fall in phishing attempts to steal money from customers' accounts and put the blame on a new toolkit that made it easier to set up such scams.
The good guys are fighting back. One means is through better blocking of spam, the river on which many automated attacks travel. Another is turning the network itself into a security device. AT&T, the largest carrier of IP data nationally, each day analyzes 1.7 petabytes of information that passes through its IP backbone, looking for new attacks so it can teach its network to spot and combat them through proprietary algorithms without human intervention.
These are only exerpts from InformationWeek's exclusive article written by Thomas Claburn.
jeffsosta
Reply #2 Friday, January 21, 2005 7:24 PM
Reply #2 Friday, January 21, 2005 7:24 PM
Since when is our internet activity spent on researching if we can provide a link to a website legally. He may have missed that "License This Article" or he might not have even cared. Just like I don't care. Those buffoons shouldn't get anything for writing a little online article.
Jafo
Reply #3 Friday, January 21, 2005 7:55 PM
Reply #3 Friday, January 21, 2005 7:55 PM
Copyrights of any shape or form, for whatever object/art/wording must be respected and adhered-to.
If the conditions of rights of distribution are not followed, no matter how barmy they may appear, or how much we "might not have even cared" then it is we who are at fault....
It does appear there is a $5.00 fee to direct link to that article...so the link has been amended to point to the site itself, not the article....
Please login to comment and/or vote for this skin.
Welcome Guest! Please take the time to register with us.
There are many great features available to you once you register, including:
- Richer content, access to many features that are disabled for guests like commenting on the forums and downloading skins.
- Access to a great community, with a massive database of many, many areas of interest.
- Access to contests & subscription offers like exclusive emails.
- It's simple, and FREE!
Reply #1 Friday, January 21, 2005 5:17 PM
Have you heard of this thing called copyright violations?
The article that you linked to - is indeed an "InformationWeek" exclusive. I noticed at the bottom of the first page a link "License This Article." I clicked on that link and found that to just add the linkage to any "corporate or academic" website, I would have to pay $2.50. I can only assume that you paid that $2.50 since you provided the link. Heck! According to the "License This Article" page, you owe $5.00 for everyone to whom you emailed the link.
Just my thoughts, but if I were providing "news," I would stay away from linking any articles for which I have to pay. I would also make it darn clear what is my wording and what is directly COPIED from the original article: give a short (five sentences or less) synopsis of the article in my own words and then give a good paragraph or two from the article quoted and indented to identify the excerpts.