__/ [ William Poaster ] on Monday 19 March 2007 12:03 \__
> According to Symantec, more than 6 million PC's are 0wn3ed. I've pointed
> out to the BBC that they *should* be saying "...6million WINDOWS Pc's".
> http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6465833.stm
>
> Symantec's report also pointed out that "more than a third of all computer
> attacks in the second half of 2006 originated from PCs in the United
> States"
>
> Why Windows pc's? Well it's the easiest platform to attack, & after all,
> don't the wintrolls keep insisting that linux isn't used, has only got
> less than 0.1% of the market etc, etc..
>
> This is from 2004: "Americans misjudge online risks"
> http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3708260.stm
>
> So nothing's changed in 3 years then.
>
> Why windoze is a security nightmare:
> http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/05/21/1085120110704.html
This is a /very/ conservative number ("at least 12 million", said another
source). Here's what the father of the Internet (or at least one of them)
says:
,----[ Quote ]
| Cerf estimated that between 100 million and 150 million of the
| 600 million PCs on the internet are under the control of hackers,
| the BBC reports.
`----
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/01/26/botnet_threat/
Only a month ago, a single botnet controlled by a Dutch dou was said to have
had 2 million PCs. That's just a fairly standard size for a botnet that's
getting the police's attention. There are many dozens of these and when they
test the water by spamming at high capacity, then some mail servers
collapse, sites fall over (or get suspended), and networks get clogged up.
There was a test run around Christmas (probably because the admins aren't
watching and the criminals are less likely to get tracked down). I saw a
surge of about 600% in my main site for a couple of days. Luckily I survived
it. The mail server did not. I think it was only one group (and botnet)
which was responsible for this and it affected many areas worldwide (scary
stuff to some... so it generated a lot of discussion in forums and mailing
lists). Never underestimate the power of millions of PCs on Ethernet,
working _simultaneously_.
You can safely assume that 1 in 4 PCs that you see out there simply sits idle
in the hands of one criminal or another. Whether s/he uses it for crime is
another matter. It's like an arsenal. And all these computers are exposed to
theft, snooping, abuse, etc. Why else would computer-related crime cost
almost a trillion dollars? And why are the authorities running scared while
Microsoft is hosting secret meetings to discuss this menace?
--
~~ Best wishes
Roy S. Schestowitz | "Computers are useless. They only solve problems"
http://Schestowitz.com | Free as in Free Beer ¦ PGP-Key: 0x74572E8E
Cpu(s): 22.4% user, 3.7% system, 0.7% nice, 73.2% idle
http://iuron.com - semantic engine to gather information
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