[LINK] www.ipv6.org.au/summit

[Rick Welykochy]

Stilgherrian wrote:

> One is the screensaver Joke.Blusod, which throws up fake a Blue Screen  
> of Death and, when you escape out of it, plays an animation of a  
> Windows restart and then, once back at the desktop, pops up a  
> convincing "Windows has encountered a serious error" dialog. After a  
> couple of these, the user is suitably paranoid.

Unfortunately, Windows users are so used to this kind of thing
happening that the above scenario would be quite acceptable to
most. This never ceases to amaze me. "Just reboot" (2nd of
the seven Rs of Windows) and Sheila B. Wright.


> where you can conveniently enter your credit card details.  
> Identity Theft R Us.
...
> All in all, though, a nice bit of social engineering once installed.
...
> Either way, the machine which did get  
> rooted soon started sending spam.

I am suitably impressed. ID theft, credit card faud and zombisation
in one hit. No wonder I keep getting these. The pool of potential
victims out here must be v-a-s-t.

<rant type=minor>

One wonders what it would take to get law enforcement to honeypot
exploits like this and then follow the trail to the source. It must
be doable. There will be an IP address/routing trail as well as a
credit card merchant trail.

One little piece is missing: the will to do so. Until it becomes a
serious issue (as if it isn't already!) and is raised to a political
level, I doubt little if anything will be done about it.

How many virus writers have been prosecuted in the past ten years?
How about copyright thieves?
The techniques of tracking down both are similar and available to
the cops.

Now ask yourself in whose interest is it to catch the former?
How about the latter?

Finally, who funds the police in either case? We do. We are actually
paying corporate welfare to do the dirty work of the media moguls
in tracking down copyright violators. But seemingly not so when it
comes to attacks on consumers.

</rant>



cheers
rickw



-- 
________________________________________________________________
Rick Welykochy || Praxis Services || Internet Driving Instructor

Do you realise that in forty years we'll have thousands of old ladies
running around with tattoos and rap music will be the golden oldies?
       -- Maxine