[svlug] botnets

[Chris Miller]

On 1/7/07, Paul Reiber <reiber at gmail.com> wrote:
> Here's a tinyurl to a recent ny times article on botnets:
> http://tinyurl.com/ymhecz
>
> There was mention of botnets over dinner after the last SVLUG meeting,
> as part of a larger discussion about spam prevention.
>
> It's good to see that information about this sort of mis-use of
> computing resources is reaching the public.
>
> Maybe they'll begin to understand the value of open source solutions
> as a means to combat this sort of thing.

A lot of the problem is that many people aren't net-savvy enough to
know the risks.  Before I got more experience behind me, I was a
danger to myself.  Then somehow I got to this climax where I gained
the ability to differentiate between good and bad internet stuff.
Sort of a sixth-sense.  Teaching that to others?  I don't know how to
do that.

> Comments?

I read /., so I've seen a lot of interesting articles and seen some
even more interesting proposals to fix the problems manifest in the
current system.  Most of them involve ancient Chinese Imperial torture
techniques on spammers and/or their families.

I'm currently nurturing my own little brainchild solution to fix the
proliferation of spam-sending botnets (just the spam part, nothing
else.)  It hinges on the answer to this question:

When I send mail to my email server (smtp.gmail.com) it goes through
as SMTP traffic, no?  So, when GMail sends that mail to my brother's
email server (comcast.net), doesn't it use a different protocol?  I
don't know.  I was about to go find out on Wikipedia but then a
on-topic thread from SVLUG appeared so I thought I'd ask.

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