From: Dave Ball (vought@msn.com)
Date: Tue Aug 27 2002 - 11:33:57 PDT
The last two companies I worked for IBM and Oracle spent millions to keep
from being hacked and virused and they were still hacked and virused.
Most fortune 100 companies will allow IT to build some sacrificial lamb
servers for "bait" and put them out on the internet I love doing this and of
course tracking the fools down who believe they have hacked into something
important and of course turning them into the authorities. Real hackers are
after something they are not releasing viruses. Viruses are coded by
software engineers or geeks with a bad attitude or since of humor you pick.
Huge companies have an Achilles tendon it is called the laptop they come and
go to places all over the world and of course the telecommuters who work
from home. VPN and secure heavy encryption have made big strides in remote
security the last couple of years .
I have spent too much time in large software companies way too much. I now
enjoy smaller short term higher gains pre IPO companies. :-).
By the way My neighbor works at Apple been there since the beginning was one
of the key programmers of OS X and Apple has plenty of holes I have seen
some of them demonstrated. But in truth Apple is just not as much fun to
mess with and I think as an underdog to Microsoft, Apple will remain one of
the least likely to draw virus attention. I have an IMac and love OS X. I
think the biggest hole is the airport card because if not set up correctly
with admin passwords and encryption they are broadcasting here I am 20 times
a minute on the internet over badly set-up home wireless networks. how many
kids are getting free internet connections by wireless this is a new big
security breech in the Internet and as the range of the access points get
better we will hear more about the kids in the backyard tree forts with mom
and dads laptops borrowing air time.
As a side note when I was a lot younger I too after learning to code in C
found how easy it was to make trouble for school equipment although I played
my games on close friends and repaired my damage after words I did piss off
a couple of friends and learned to use my abilities to fix "bugs" not create
them.
I agree with you Steve software engineers are a Scary bunch when I go to
engineering meetings I dread it they exercise my temper and they will
continue to be the biggest security hole because of there need to experiment
with everything in sight after all creating and fixing bugs is a software
engineers job but there are some truly talented "good people" in this
industry.
To repeat myself we are all at risk and we need to aim our anger at those
who created the virus or hacked into our systems not at our friends who
these malicious people perpetrated there scams on our friends deserve our
help to some a computer is a necessary evil they would rather they were
never invented they may not have the ability to protect themselves as well
as they should it is not there fault they would rather work on there GPW
most days I would like to join them.
Dave
Flame away (o)
----- Original Message -----
From: "Steve Grammont" <islander@midmaine.com>
To: "Dave Ball" <vought@msn.com>; "MV" <mil-veh@mil-veh.org>
Sent: Tuesday, August 27, 2002 7:57 AM
Subject: Re: [MV] Sturmtiger1944 - Virus warning
> Dave,
>
> For those who insist that the end user should be shot when their email
> address is found in some SPAM or virus...
>
> >Web Mail, Norton, Firewall, Spoof, outlook, these are just words. Words
are
> >not the problem executed code is the problem and if you open email have a
> >connection to the internet then you are at risk, we all are at risk.
>
> To add to Dave's comments...
>
> I use a Mac without MS Outlook, and therefore none of various "double
> click" viruses that are hitting people supposedly from my various email
> accounts have anything to do with what *I* or my software have done. My
> accounts are on a large ISP as well as our own Win2k sever with all the
> most up-to-date security patches (my IT guy was hired away from a Fortune
> 500 IT department). Yet people get emails with my email address all the
> time. Blaming me for the problem is like blaming someone who doesn't eat
> every last scrap of dinner for world hunger. There is nothing that I can
> do to avoid the problem except to close my accounts and never go on the
> Internet again.
>
> My point here is that there is one golden rule in the software biz (which
> I am in) when it comes to hacking. And that is, if someone wants to hack
> something, eventually they will do so given enough time and talent. I
> deal with these schmucks every day so I know not only what they are
> capable of, but how they think. And neither are pretty sights.
>
> Just my 2 bits worth.
>
> Steve
>
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