NY Times On Spam Zombies

A discreetly valorous slashdotter writes "The NY Times is featuring a story about the growing armies of spam zombies. It focuses on New Jersey teen spammer Jasmine Singh. Choice quote: 'Hacking in its purest form is not about compensation or about wrecking a Web site. Hacking in its pure form is to show what you can do.'"

Re:Why can't this be stopped ?

[Seumas]

If the SBL can shot down an entire group of blocks because of one spammer on one IP, then someone should be able to shut down an entire ISP (say, AOL, Earthlink, etc) if they have just one spam-sending zombie. Period.

I mean, what's good for one group is good for the other, right?

No Registration!

[Anonymous Coward]

Would Slashdot please quit posting stories
that you have to register for to read.

Thank You.

Ok Article....

[thesnarky1]

but I don't think they really got to the real news here. The article doesn't mention how users can protect themselves at all. And it only focuses on the one case, when I think there could have been bigger name cases that would display the same message better. Is this article going to make the average user care at all, not in my opinion. The underlying theme I got from the article is that hackers are these crafty people who are sneaking onto your system, not something you can stop *coughfirewallscough*. Ok, maybe not ever totally stop, but slow down. My windows machine (only for games, I swear) has been clean (cept for Windows) for a month now, behind a hardware firewall (linux Fedora core 3) and a software (Zone Alarm). Just my two cents.

--Snarky

Re:Attention all c00l haxxors out there

[Anonymous Coward]

I seriously doubt the FBI gives a shit about your box.

You sound just as childish as the script kiddies who think they can own you if you touch them.

I also doubt that the kiddies in Russia really give a damn about your petty FBI threats, considering they are untouchable.

Re:Why can't this be stopped ?

[yog]

All responsible ISPs have terms of service agreements that strictly prohibit abusive practices such as phishing, spamming, warez and media trading. They reserve the right to terminate anyone's service who is violating these agreements. Beyond that, it's not reasonable to expect the ISPs to be punished for other people's irresponsible or illegal behavior, any more than the car dealer should be punished for selling a car that is used in a bank robbery or the hunting goods store for selling ammo. You can't have freedom and also place that kind of restriction on third parties. That said, service providers such as Verizon are closing certain ports to reduce this kind of attack.

The bottom line is that the software is flawed and should be replaced. That's something that is happening over time; Apples and Linux and other OSes are pretty secure now, and Microsoft is really trying to catch up.

Eventually it will be a lot harder for a 17-year-old to command an army of zombie PCs. In the 1970s, it was incredibly easy to hack into sites via a modem, using easily guessed passwords (guest/guest) because it was such a rare thing even to have a computer and a modem. The teen hackers of that era would be clueless today, just as these punks will be clueless 5-10 years from now.

Re:Why can't this be stopped ?

[caskey]

I think everyone is better off when ISPs stay out of the business of controlling customers based upon the type of traffic they're sending or even worse what type of equipment they have. Consider the following two scenarios:

SnoopyISP has a 'we can shut you down based upon the traffic you send' policy. After doing so, they could be set upon to offer this service to RIAA, MPAA, etc, etc. After all, they can't say they can't/won't do it.

SnoopyISP says, "sorry, we don't let anyone who isn't running XP with our approved set of firewall apps running on it.", "But sir, I run linux, no worms here!", "Linux? Isn't that the hacker os? Sorry, we need to be sure that spam zombies don't attack. Therefore you must run UltraFireSoft Anti Hack Pro which we provide for free." "Do they have a Linux version? BSD? OSX? etc?" "Sorry, no, only windows XP. Oh and you need to have their auto-update feature turned on at all times--just to be safe."

I'll take a net where I can pay for network connectivity and get that, and I can pay for email filtering, and get that. I most certainy and emphatically DO NOT want to create inroads (beyond such that may already exist) into ISPs doing traffic or configuration based filtering/management of customers.

From TFA...

[andreMA]

Officials at the F.B.I. and the Justice Department say their inquiries on the zombie networks are exposing serious vulnerabilities in the Internet that could be exploited more widely by saboteurs to bring down Web sites or online messaging systems.

Um, no. The vulnerabilities exposed are most often in Microsoft products, which allow the user to be owned. Someone needs to thwap the "Officials at the F.B.I. and the Justice Department" upside the head with a clue by four.

Re:discreetly valorous slashdotter

[Nasarius]

Tip: over-explaining the joke makes it not funny. I don't think most of us had to consult a dictionary for that one.

Re:That's exactly right...

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not right in any meaningful sense.

There are a crapload of people who for over 20 years have been using the term "hacker" in conjunction with words like "phreaker," which were the terms used by everyone in the 80s BBS scene. When people like you tell them "the word you've been using for two decades doesn't actually mean that," they will pat you on your cute little head and say "ok, whatever, run along now." Because ya know what? You don't own the word or its meaning. If I start calling my car a puppy and act condescending when people correct me then I'm an asshole, but if I've been using 'hacker' along with a huge community of others to self-identify for over 20 years then that's another story.

The long and short of it is you don't control the word and it escaped your definition a long time ago. The word spawned another meaning a LONG time ago and although you might not like it you're powerless to make it go away. That's how language works.

I'm sorry it annoys you, but thems the brakes, kiddo.

Re:maybe its me

[anitha cn-]

Probably it's not the spamming they are talking about. Probably it's the fact the spammers are cracking into other computers in order to spam.

Quitcher bitchin'

[jfengel]

I'm afraid you're kinda screwed on this point. Slashdot is a news aggregator. This story is effectively a dupe of one that came before, but the "news" is that it's the New York Times publishing it, which has a far more important readership than PC World.

In other words, the news isn't that there are zombies, but that a very important mainstream newspaper is telling people that there are zombies, and lots of 'em. You can't get this story from any other source, because the source is the story.

And because the New York Times is so important, they get to charge for content. In this case the charge is cheap: you just let them know who you are, so that they can better sell ad space. That's not free, but it's pretty cheap.

So basically I doubt Slashdot is ever going to "quit posting stories taht you have to register for to read", because that's where the good news is. If you'd like to establish an open source news gathering organization and make it available for free without registration, feel free.

That's news "gathering" like the Times, not "aggregating", like Slashdot. News gathering is usually considered pretty expensive. You have to have a lot of reporters, and editors. And it takes time to establish the reputation that the Times has. And like software, news depends on trust.

But hey, news, like software, is free to distribute once it's created, so maybe the open source model will apply. Go for it.

Alternatively, stop bitching about what people are giving you for free (Slashdot summaries) or cheap (New York Times articles for the price of some trivial and easily lied about demographics). Your choice.

Re:Quitcher bitchin'

[rmm4pi8]

I don't understand why Slashdot, unlike ever other blog in existence, doesn't use the RSS-feed-links to the stories, as these are no-reg.