Moron marketers threaten 'Net users
Boy, Code Red sure is annoying, no? Even at home, the little system-tray icon for my personal firewall kept flashing this weekend with port probes coming mainly from infected boxes owned by clueless broadband users.
Nicholas Weaver wonders if somebody took something like Code Red, only speeded it up so it did a lot more scans in a much shorter period of time. He posits that the author of a "Warhol virus" is a bit more sophisticated and builds in multithreading (so it can probe and attack multiple machines at once) and starts his attack with a list of 50,000 machines known to have good 'Net connections:
There is no current defense against a malicious Warhol worm. The author of a Warhol worm could easily cause hundreds of billions in real damage, through corrupted data, destroyed machines, and lost time. By the time the world realizes what is happening, all the damage would be done.
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However, Weaver adds this is not necessarily much different from the current situation: With all the attention Code Red's gotten, even in the popular media, people with at-risk machines are still letting them get infected (which gets back to all those HTTP probes I saw this weekend).
Tell AOL what to do with its CDs
From the fun-yet-pointless department comes No More AOL CDs, an effort to convince AOL to stop sending out those drink coasters (fun fact: my sister holds a patent for turning usless CDs into coasters). How to stop the bombardment?
We want to personally deliver to AOL Headquarters as many of their CDs as we can. Our goal is an even one million (1,000,000). Upon reaching this number, we will begin our cross-country pilgrimage to "Return To Sender" the unwanted CDs.
By sending us your AOL CDs you will be part of this Epic Crusade to take back our privacy.
Via Fark.
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