[RTC List] 60 Minutes story: The Internet is Infected

Mon Mar 30 17:50:27 PDT 2009

  When it comes to my clients business and safety i always try and take a conservative approach. It may be that the businesses i work with have more sensitive data than some but I absolutely believe 3-4% of computers have disabled patching or have it set to manual and have not installed them.  It is fairly common for people to let their antivirus subscription expire and not understand the impact. 

  I have also seen several computers in the last year or two where the antivirus was disabled because it inconvenienced the user.   I would not be surprised in the least to see a significant increase in spam around the first but the industry has made significant attempts to mitigate the Conficker virus and I hope that them taking it seriously will reduce the impact of the affected computers. 

  I hope for the best and plan for something short of it :)  

Respectfully,

Robert Beckerdite
Senior Engineer and Owner
Beckerdite Consulting
(707) 703-1528
www.beckerdite.com

> From: pat_bitton at eurestopartners.com
> To: jankrpln at humboldt1.com; List at redwoodtech.org
> Date: Mon, 30 Mar 2009 17:14:36 -0700
> Subject: Re: [RTC List] 60 Minutes story: The Internet is Infected
> 
> Despite all 60 Minutes' (and Symantec's) attempts at the contrary, the sky
> is not going to fall on April 1st. Anyone whose system is patched up to date
> and who has updated anti-virus protection from a reputable vendor (with
> heuristic detection for preference, as this will block any new iterations of
> Conficker that appear) is unlikely to experience any ill-effects. 
> 
> Interestingly, the number of new virus examples appearing in labs every day
> was actually under-estimated by Symantec. AVG (full disclosure: I am a
> contractor for them) has between 20,000 and 30,000 new samples arriving in
> their labs every day. BUT most of these never make it into the wild, so all
> that updating really doesn't improve protection to any significant degree. 
> 
> The bad guys on the Internet are mostly in Russia and China. This has been
> the case for several years. Anyone interested in the backstory should check
> out the archives at Roger Thompson's blog,
> http://tcsltesting.blogspot.com/index.html.
> 
> Pat Bitton
> Partner, Euresto Partners Inc
> Sales & Marketing Strategies for Technology Startups
> +1 707 268 8968/+1 408 464 0829 cell
> MSN IM: pbitton at hotmail.com
> Skype: pat.bitton
> Follow me on Twitter @PatBitton
> www.eurestopartners.com
> 
> Looking for security advice? Check out
> www.theinternetprotectors.com
> 
> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: list-bounces at redwoodtech.org [mailto:list-bounces at redwoodtech.org] On
> Behalf Of jankrpln at humboldt1.com
> Sent: Monday, March 30, 2009 4:47 PM
> To: List at redwoodtech.org
> Subject: [RTC List] 60 Minutes story: The Internet is Infected
> 
> Dear All,
> 
> I am very surprised to not find anyone posting to the RTC list today,
> anything about last night's "60 Minutes" story describing among other
> things:
> 
> - 15,000 new viruses created every day.
> - Symantics now sends their virus updates out every five minutes.
> - The Russian connection to malware (young hackers and no enforcement).
> - The Conficker virus, currently residing in 10 million computers focusing
> on corporations (in some for months) and awaiting instructions for something
> on April 1st.
> 
> This fascinating story can be found at:
> 
> http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/03/27/60minutes/main4897053.shtml?source
> =mostpop_story
> 
> When a credible source like "60 Minutes" does this sort of story something
> is going on. To me Internet malware seems like the gorilla in the room. 
> It is analogous to the Presidential Daily Briefing in August right before
> the tragic events of 9/11. A top-to-bottom review should be ordered by
> governments and also by technology companies. The Internet has already been
> used in association with terrorist activities and warfare (recent cyberwar
> actions from both sides when Russia sent troops into Georgia in August).
> Does anyone doubt that the Internet is not a target and a vehicle for great
> damage done by terrorists and sociopaths?
> 
> I personally don't think anything will really happen April 1st, but I am
> amazed that we are at the moment losing that battle - and that more isn't
> being organized on the international level among governments similar to
> international public health policies, laws, and enforcement. Viruses and
> worms are apt terms indeed.
> 
> Jan Kraepelien
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> List mailing list
> List at redwoodtech.org
> http://redwoodtech.org/mailman/listinfo/list_redwoodtech.org
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> List mailing list
> List at redwoodtech.org
> http://redwoodtech.org/mailman/listinfo/list_redwoodtech.org

_________________________________________________________________
Use Messenger to talk to your IM friends, even those on Yahoo!
http://ideas.live.com/programpage.aspx?versionId=7adb59de-a857-45ba-81cc-685ee3e858fe
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://redwoodtech.org/pipermail/list_redwoodtech.org/attachments/20090330/a393370f/attachment.html>