On Thu, 10 Apr 2008 15:16:24 +0100, Cork Soaker wrote:

> Computer viruses hit one million
>
> The number of viruses, worms and trojans in circulation has topped the one
> million mark.
>
> The new high for malicious programs was revealed by security firm Symantec
> in the latest edition of its bi-annual Internet Security Threat Report.
>
> The vast majority of these programs have been created in the last twelve
> months, said Symantec.
>
> http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7340315.stm

Most of those are booby-trapped websites.

But all this is a direct reflection of the weakness of the laws and
prosecutions involved.

For example, in this article

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7256501.stm

linked to by the above article, a teenager who took over hundreds of
thousands of computers from the US was allowed to plead guilty to a
"delinquency" charge, not grand larceny, and not the proper charge which
would include a count for every system compromised.

Furthermore, manufacturers and retailers who vend completely unsecured
systems aren't touched by the laws at all (systems should always be locked
down to the max from the first, and the user liable for his insecure
practices thereafter).

And those who deliberately launch malwares intended to or which in the
course of their maximal successful function must jam the Internet-- worms
and spam-floods and Distributed Denial of Service attacks (something like
ninety percent of all email traffic is spam, and about five percent of all
Internet traffic is email spam and IRC DDOS attacks)-- should be tried
before International Military Tribunals, under military law, as having
deliberately launched international communication-jamming military attacks
against the information infrastructure of the planet.

But none of that's going to happen-- there's not going to be any serious
addressing of the problem-- and so the above is only going to get worse.

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