RE: [Asrg] SICS

[Barry Shein <bzs at world.std.com>]

Yes, but the very assumption that anyone would "take down" a zombie PC
(block, disable, whatever) belies the "end-user control" notion of
spam.

For all I know there's someone out there who wants that zombie to spew
at them, maybe they're doing research or something. And, by EFF's
recommendations, it would be morally repugnant for an ISP to thus
interfere.

So although it might be a slightly different case, it's the same exact
issue.

You just think no one is crazy enough to defend zombie PCs, and I'd
like to think you're correct. But as far as I can tell EFF is that
crazy.

And if that's not what they're trying to say in that white paper then
they should disabuse it and admit that under current conditions the
distinction they make is at best purely academic (i.e., there may
exist at least one instance which fits their profile, but whether it's
representative or even definable remains an open question), and at
worst purely idiotic.


On December 21, 2004 at 17:38 william at elan.net (william(at)elan.net) wrote:
 > 
 > On Tue, 21 Dec 2004, Hannigan, Martin wrote:
 > > 
 > > The ISP's cooperate. Going after the zombies is, for the
 > > most part, an ineffective approach to the situation.
 > 
 > I'm not talking about reactive approach - I'm talking about prevention of 
 > this in the first place. All that is necessary is that ISPs agree to share
 > in a standard way a list of host they believe to be responsible enough to
 > freely participate in SMTP transactions on their own. This cuts down list 
 > of possible zombie targets to very few machines run by users who are 
 > already likely to have security mechanism that prevents their system from
 > being taken over.
 > 
 > > Search and destroy of the controllers is more effective i.e.
 > > 1 controller = 100K downed bots. (example)
 > > There's a ton of work going on behind the scenes.
 > 
 > It is certainly good that this is going on, I've been involved in couple 
 > of these "search and destroy" missions myself. But this is all work after
 > the fact when we should be trying to research ways to prevent the occurance
 > of the problem in the first place. In other words, would you prefer to 
 > face possiblity of being sick with a smallpox rather then the world 
 > having choosen to immunize everyone against it some time ago which 
 > effectively got rid of the problem? 
 > 
 > -- 
 > William Leibzon
 > Elan Networks
 > william at elan.net
 > 
 > 
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 > Asrg at ietf.org
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