[LINK] itNews re the iCode and Botnet Countermeasures

Jan Whitaker jwhit at melbpc.org.au
Wed Apr 4 09:59:22 AEST 2012


At 09:30 AM 4/04/2012, Roger Clarke wrote:

>Telstra, which implements the code despite withdrawing its membership
>and financial support from the IIA last year, criticised the body's
>continuing reliance on a voluntary mechanism, which it said provided
>"no incentive for smaller ISPs to comply as compared to registered
>codes".

I raised the malware shut-off issue with our local computer club last 
week. One question I was asked was would Bigpond be more affected 
than the others. My take on it was that it was logical were that to 
be found because of the market dominance of Bigpond. I wonder if we 
will ever find out the distribution of the 10,000 suspected infected 
computers. The smaller providers are not necessarily the ones who 
will have the most people with problems.

The other issue is: how are they communicating with the infected 
parties? I know people who don't even use the email assigned to them 
by their ISPs (don't access it in any way, instead using gmail or 
some other transferable email provider) or whose mailboxes are so 
full they wouldn't get the alert if it were sent. Yet they are still 
on the net. And they wouldn't have a clue that this shut-down was 
going to take place.

There is also the risk of receiving email from people purporting to 
be your supplier (or bank or whatever "authority") without certainty 
it is from them.

The best approach to handling this latest problem was the DNS test 
provide to everyone in the country. That sort of collaboration would 
be a much better approach, I reckon.

Jan



Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
jwhit at janwhitaker.com
blog: http://janwhitaker.com/jansblog/
business: http://www.janwhitaker.com

Our truest response to the irrationality of the world is to paint or 
sing or write, for only in such response do we find truth.
~Madeline L'Engle, writer

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