Mr. Glass
08-23-2005, 12:39 AM
http://news.yahoo.com/s/csm/20050822/ts_csm/avirus
So, curious... how long have you guys been online?
I got my first modem when I was in 6th grade...(doing math, tongue out, crossed eyes...)...like 1989/1990, it was a 2400 baud deal, top of the line, I still have it somewhere but forget the brand. The other end was connected at first to a handful of local BBS systems, one of which, Zynet, had an internet gateway. It was pretty basic RBBS gateway interface, sort of like Unix in a childs sippy-kup. Anyways.... it had a few cool tools... Pine, Gopher, and IRC.
Pine was email, Gopher was kind of like the web...more like an interactive rolodex/dictionary/encyclopedia, and IRC was, and still is, Internet Relay Chat.
Lynx came along sometime around then too, and the WWW was born. I registered my first domain names for free, and was told at the time I would have them for life..... HAHAHAHAHA...lies I tell ya.. I still have a few, but they took all my .edu and .us domains.
Over time I upgraded to a 9600 baud, then a 14.4, 28.8, 56k, ISDN, Frame Realy for a while (T1, exspensive but this was long before cable), then wireless relay (3mb/400k 802.11b over 3km link to a shared T1 was around $200/mo) and finally cable modems.... which is like 6mb down and 256k up....
Anyways.... In all that time the whole thing about "hackers" has been a topic I follow... I've seen EVERY hacker movie...Sneakers is the best....I've hung out with some hard core hackers, been to several DEFCONs in vegas (after 5 it got way too commercial/trendy... when hotels WANT you there, it's no fun any more) and this whole Virus thing has been picking at my mind for a few years now.....
The people I've met and talked to and listened to and read about are not doing this..... they have the skill / ability to... but they're not doing this....
I'm starting to seriously think there's some large state sponsored digital terrorost out there.... I suspect Russia, China, Iran and N. Korea are probably playing some role. I know that a lot of the identity theft and bank fraud takes place through russian organized crime... to what extend they're state sponsored is only an area of conspiracy to me, as i dont know enough to know for certain either way... but I suspect they're one in the same. The chinese have the manpower and technical ability. Korea has the desire and technology, and Iran has the money, skill, and technology, but not so much the underlying desire.
Recently I was in Kansas visitng my Grandparents, who are pretty staunch conservatives, and they have a cable modem w/ wireless in their apartment, which sits along a busy hiway. From outside i could pick up thjeir signal and use it as my own with no way of identifying me or my device, I was 100% anonymous (I spoof my MAC, and the ipaqs dont have a processorID. ) I got to thinking about that and tried to explain to my grandfather that _ANYONE_ could use his internet cnnection to send and recieve email, browse the web, or upload/download files (child porn, bomb plans, movies/music, etc) and he just didn't comprehend that....he wasn't the slightest bit concerned....
That kind of worried me.
...
Anyways...the point of all this is.... if you're running an insecure system on the internet, find a way to fix it. If you don't know how, then find someone who does, even if you have to pay for it. If you don't know if your system is secure, find out, if you don't know how to find out, find someone you can trust who does. If you think your system is secure, double check. recheck often.
I use 4 layers of hardware firewalls, bridges, and routers to get outside my house.... I feel pretty safe no one can get in, but I still check what's running constantly, and once in a while mysterious fragments of requests get past the first layer, and alarms go off...*knock on wood*
Owning a computer and having an Internet connection is a privledge, not a right. If you can't be a responsible participant, then don't be suprised when someone asks you to leave. This isn't a cheap privledge, but if you can afford monthly connection fees, then you can afford the minimal security costs. Take the time to learn about your computer and how it runs. This is not a car, you DO have to know how it works in order to use it properly. If you don't then someone else can take controll without your knowledge and use it to kill someone in your name. Try that with a minivan.
As the war on terror is driven underground the front will come to us in non-tangible ways. The Internet is a powerful tool that can affect every aspect of this nations infrastructure from banking and commerce to education and defense. While some of us are staring out the windows with guns ready to shoot Osama Bin Ladin, they're crawling in through our phone lines.
-Doug
So, curious... how long have you guys been online?
I got my first modem when I was in 6th grade...(doing math, tongue out, crossed eyes...)...like 1989/1990, it was a 2400 baud deal, top of the line, I still have it somewhere but forget the brand. The other end was connected at first to a handful of local BBS systems, one of which, Zynet, had an internet gateway. It was pretty basic RBBS gateway interface, sort of like Unix in a childs sippy-kup. Anyways.... it had a few cool tools... Pine, Gopher, and IRC.
Pine was email, Gopher was kind of like the web...more like an interactive rolodex/dictionary/encyclopedia, and IRC was, and still is, Internet Relay Chat.
Lynx came along sometime around then too, and the WWW was born. I registered my first domain names for free, and was told at the time I would have them for life..... HAHAHAHAHA...lies I tell ya.. I still have a few, but they took all my .edu and .us domains.
Over time I upgraded to a 9600 baud, then a 14.4, 28.8, 56k, ISDN, Frame Realy for a while (T1, exspensive but this was long before cable), then wireless relay (3mb/400k 802.11b over 3km link to a shared T1 was around $200/mo) and finally cable modems.... which is like 6mb down and 256k up....
Anyways.... In all that time the whole thing about "hackers" has been a topic I follow... I've seen EVERY hacker movie...Sneakers is the best....I've hung out with some hard core hackers, been to several DEFCONs in vegas (after 5 it got way too commercial/trendy... when hotels WANT you there, it's no fun any more) and this whole Virus thing has been picking at my mind for a few years now.....
The people I've met and talked to and listened to and read about are not doing this..... they have the skill / ability to... but they're not doing this....
I'm starting to seriously think there's some large state sponsored digital terrorost out there.... I suspect Russia, China, Iran and N. Korea are probably playing some role. I know that a lot of the identity theft and bank fraud takes place through russian organized crime... to what extend they're state sponsored is only an area of conspiracy to me, as i dont know enough to know for certain either way... but I suspect they're one in the same. The chinese have the manpower and technical ability. Korea has the desire and technology, and Iran has the money, skill, and technology, but not so much the underlying desire.
Recently I was in Kansas visitng my Grandparents, who are pretty staunch conservatives, and they have a cable modem w/ wireless in their apartment, which sits along a busy hiway. From outside i could pick up thjeir signal and use it as my own with no way of identifying me or my device, I was 100% anonymous (I spoof my MAC, and the ipaqs dont have a processorID. ) I got to thinking about that and tried to explain to my grandfather that _ANYONE_ could use his internet cnnection to send and recieve email, browse the web, or upload/download files (child porn, bomb plans, movies/music, etc) and he just didn't comprehend that....he wasn't the slightest bit concerned....
That kind of worried me.
...
Anyways...the point of all this is.... if you're running an insecure system on the internet, find a way to fix it. If you don't know how, then find someone who does, even if you have to pay for it. If you don't know if your system is secure, find out, if you don't know how to find out, find someone you can trust who does. If you think your system is secure, double check. recheck often.
I use 4 layers of hardware firewalls, bridges, and routers to get outside my house.... I feel pretty safe no one can get in, but I still check what's running constantly, and once in a while mysterious fragments of requests get past the first layer, and alarms go off...*knock on wood*
Owning a computer and having an Internet connection is a privledge, not a right. If you can't be a responsible participant, then don't be suprised when someone asks you to leave. This isn't a cheap privledge, but if you can afford monthly connection fees, then you can afford the minimal security costs. Take the time to learn about your computer and how it runs. This is not a car, you DO have to know how it works in order to use it properly. If you don't then someone else can take controll without your knowledge and use it to kill someone in your name. Try that with a minivan.
As the war on terror is driven underground the front will come to us in non-tangible ways. The Internet is a powerful tool that can affect every aspect of this nations infrastructure from banking and commerce to education and defense. While some of us are staring out the windows with guns ready to shoot Osama Bin Ladin, they're crawling in through our phone lines.
-Doug