Death to Hackers!

[Nothing But Net]

My office and those of many of my clients have been struck by the 'nimda' virus. We have spent countless hours, as have many other people across the world.

This is a new form of terrorism, as much as anything else, and I am glad the United States government wants to consider it as such. It should be a capital crime, as far as I'm concerned.

While (we hope!) nobody actually died (but we don't really know) from this virus, it has subtracted numerous hours from the earth's life force; far more than it could EVER recompense!

Hence, and therefor, its perpetrator must die!

NBN

[Hubris Boy]

Your office has been affected by the Nimda virus because your system administrator is incompetent. Fire him.

People who write virii (assuming you can find them) should receive appropriate punishment. Death penalty? Not hardly.

You're an idiot.

[Nothing But Net]

Nevertheless, this was a destructive worm.

I'm happy just cruising around the net. I don't want to harm anyone else in any way.

But this this fucker does! If I got this virus on my home PC, I would pull the execution switch on this motherfucker myself!

And you can hold to me to that promise!

It is terrorism of a different sort, but terrorism is terrorism nonetheless.

What if your fucking car didn't start tomorrow? And terrorists did it? You'd be pissed, and for some of us it's the same fucking thing.

NBN

[jaguar]

Find a good place to place your anger. If Microsoft didn't make such shithouse software it would not be a problem.

Hear, hear Hubris.

To extend your rather questionable logic which seems highly reliant on you still being on an anti-terrorist high..

If I double parked you into a stop on a major road and pissed you off, I’m an evil terrorist?

And who is a terrorist is highly subjective, I’m sure the British thought those who started the American Civil war were terrorists....(yes I cannot name any, my American history is rather weak)

YOU have wanted god knows how many minutes of my time with silly posts like this thread, YOU should die too then!!

[Nothing But Net]

it's another to waste others, perhaps millions of people's time.

There is no justification for it, and as I said there should be no forgiveness in turn.

Perhaps the death penalty would be a bit harsh in these cases.

I would settle for life without parole. These assholes ARE terrorists as far as I am concerned.

[Nothing But Net]

If you would make the least attempt to spell correctly and construct a grammatically correct sentence:

I might listen to your shit sometime.

I probably won't agree with it, but I'll hear it!

[serge]

Only the best of us are able to successfully travel the labyrinth of patches/fixes/service packs for shit that is NT/IIS. Truth is.. you want luser-friendly systems.. but now you know the price (that and the $$$$ licensing fees).

There's only one solution.. either a) hire a competent admin or b) switch to open-source environment and hire a competent admin

Case b) will save you a lot of money plus almost eliminate a possibility of something like "nimba" ever affecting your operations.

[Hubris Boy]

Originally posted by Nothing But Net
If you would make the least attempt to spell correctly and construct a grammatically correct sentence:

Hey, shit-for-brains. Yeah, YOU.

Lay off picking on Jaguar's spelling and grammar. That's MY job.

Originally posted by jaguar
And who is a terrorist is highly subjective, I’m sure the British thought those who started the American Civil war were terrorists....(yes I cannot name any, my American history is rather weak)

It's not THAT subjective. Since a) it was the Revolutionary War and b) they're not sure who fired the first shot, but evidence points to the British and c) they'd been terrorizing the colonists for quite some time. The men who fought that war on our side were fighting their government to overthrow it and form a new one. I would say this differs from a terrorist attack in the sense that a) only soldiers were getting killed and b) we were fighting our government, not some people in a far away land that had absolutely NOTHING to do with us.

Now, I know you're thinking "Afghanistan". But you can save your typing hands on that one. 'Cause we're not going to be killing for the purpose of killing civilians. We are going to be going after someone that has helped finance and perpetrate an attack on innocent civilians of some 60 countries. If the evidence that's floating around now is true, I'd say that's pretty compelling that bin Laden's organization was involved. And how do you keep these cells from operating? Choke off their life blood. And that's what bin Laden is.

[Xugumad]

I am baffled. Utterly and completely baffled.

A few weeks ago, the most vicious and brutal assault on American civilians was committed by terrorists who had only other people's deaths on their minds, simply in order to show the world that their cause was important, and that they would not be ignored.

A barbaric act, despicable and abhorrent in its entirety, from inception to execution.

And now somebody's comparing the writer of an Internet worm with those people. Using the term 'terrorist' to express his hatred for that person, simply because the person's actions inconvenience him greatly.

Make no mistake: I don't think that significant loss of productivity and people's work is just a minor offense. The worm writer was a class A idiot who had no concerns for the work and effort of others, even if he just wanted to expose the weakness and imbecilic design flaws of Microsoft software. But to equate his acts with those of the murderous terrorists is ridiculous - and worse.

By setting a comparatively minor crime on the same level as those of the terrorists, you are attempting to trivialize terrorism. You are equating the deaths of thousands with the death of thousands of MS Word documents and crashed IIS servers. Personally, I find that disgusting.

The fact that the US state department is currently trying to strong-arm laws through Congress that will make many other things 'acts of terrorisms', specifically hacking/cracking attempts that worm writing would apply to as well, is mind-boggling.

Keep things in perspective. The anger at the attacks was justified. The boiling hatred for all things that might appear threatening to the 'Christian' American Way of Life(tm) is not. (Yes, I know this isn't what the initial posting was about) At the same time, keep actual acts of terrorism sharply differentiated from everything that isn't actually a true terrorist act. To bunch lots of criminal acts into one big terrorist definition is foolish at best and lethal to everybody's personal freedoms at worst.

Or, to phrase it much more concisely: It's just a worm, alright?

And finally, I also find it distasteful to shout loudly about wanting to kill people, and being prepared to pull the switch yourself, etc. Possibly because I have religious qualms about killing other people, possibly because my humanist education made me squeamish about wanting to murder others, who knows? It's somewhat understandable in light of the Sep11 events, as this is just human nature - wanting revenge.

However, applying it to the writer of a computer virus? Jesus Christ. If you consider yourself a Christian, think REALLY FUCKING HARD about what you're saying there, friend. And if you're not - it's just a computer virus. Yes, it's REALLY, REALLY annoying. Human life has no price. Your productivity does.

X.

[jaguar]

*rubs hands with glee*
First of all NBN, I ran my post in this thread though the WOrd2k spellchecker without a problem, then past an English teacher to make sure. Not a fucking problem. Please don't try to drag in irrelevant tangents. I can spell, and my grammar, my problem is I cannot type, my English average is A. For a while neither my Linux nor windows boxen had a program with a spellchecker (barely had a system at all for a while) which resulted is some truly terrible posts, I do make an open apology for those. Mabye its my English spelling thats confusing you NBN, try learning real English. (this from a guy that uses net english....)

Hubris is correct, it’s his job not yours :p

it's another to waste others, perhaps millions of people's time.

Yes, your posts are.

I would settle for life without parole. These assholes ARE terrorists as far as I am concerned.

From what I can work out anyone who you don't like is a frigging terrorist.


Xugumad, I agree entirely.

The civil war thing was a bit weak I know, I couldn't think of a better example, I was just trying to point out that as I’m sure most people realize who is a terrorist is purely a matter of perception.

[juju]

I'd go so far as to say that NBN was only kidding. But if he's serious...then
man...that's just scary... :]

[lisa]

Well, I was gonna stay out of this one, but I'll throw my two cents in...

Most of these "hackers" are rather young people who are still "learning" a lot about computers. At that age (and I remember all the geeks in college who did things like this -- though not as bad as what we are talking about) they like to experiment and see what they can do.

If you look closely, most of the virii that propigate a lot tend to propigate and do little else -- realitively minor things compared to the things that they could do to an infected system.

AFAIK, computers (especially insecure systems (of whatever OS)), are oen of the few things where someone can do as much damage as they do as easily as they do.

An appro quote here, I think, is: "If builders built buildings the way programmers write programs, the first woodpecker to come along would destroy civilization." IMHO, these people are not much more than the above mentioned woodpeckers -- albiet a bit more malicious.

But with these systems as vulnerable as they are, and no easy tracibility, I think a lot of people I knew many years ago would have a hard time passing up the opportunity to do so.

Or, put another way, if buildings came down with just the tap of a hammer, I honestly think we'd have a lot of (probably much younger kids) running around knocking down buildings -- there is some measure of destructive tendancy in a lot of people. What keeps most in check is their own sense of morals and fear of getting caught and the effort that it takes to "get away with it."

While I do not exhonerate the people who break into these systems. I, personally, put a lot of the responsibility for the crackers ("hackers", BTW, means something else to coders) on the sysadmins and software producers who create the buildings that can fall with a simple tap... oh, and leave all the doors unlocked.

[vsp]

NBN wrote:

>What if your fucking car didn't start tomorrow? And terrorists did it? You'd be pissed, and for some of us it's the same fucking thing.

Please. If your car doesn't start tomorrow because you left the HOOD UP overnight and someone went rummaging through the wiring, don't expect the cops to have quite as much sympathy as usual.

And so it goes with mail servers.

jeff. whose mail goes through a self-designed six-layer Procmail filter before it reaches his Unix shell, and who likes it that way

[jet_silver]

An awful lot of viruses exploit things -you should NOT DO-, and that is why I say it's inexcusable to have them. You have to deliberately turn off your brain, and fail to care about warnings that have been hollered from towers, belfries, tall trees and soap boxes around the world for years, in order to be vulnerable to many of them. Close your shares, change your passwords, turn off services you are not using. If you're stuck with M$ stuff, make it paranoid. Don't do things you -should know by now- not to do. It isn't that hard but it demands more than point-and-drool sk1llz. When news reports start talking about viruses, -care about your system- and find out what risks exist.

Folks, there are people both dedicated and smart who WANT TO SOLVE YOUR PROBLEMS with system vulnerability. They want to give you free software that will keep viruses off your systems. If necessary I will make a -list- of these, do I need to do that?

You can assemble the hardware -cheap-. A $99 Netpliance I-Opener (my home firewall box) can probably run at T1 speeds when it is doing packet filtering, it's way overkill for dialup. You probably want a faster system than that if you are using an IDS like Snort, but it depends on your ability, needs, and level of interest.

It sure wouldn't hurt, either, to consider applying security with an OS designed for it, like OpenBSD. Do I need to make plain that out-of-the-box M$ products are not biased for security?

Aside: Jaguar, if your English skills are good, but no one knows it, what does that tell you? 'Teh' is not a word. Thi sis nota setnecne. If you are careless with your communication, that tells me you (literally) don't care about what you're saying. I take your word for it and don't bother to read it.