Wed, 29 May 2002
Chris Wenham on solving the virus plague
While studying hacker techniques, security firms have set up machines called “honeypots” that are designed to draw attacks to a place where they can be studied. With only a slight change in their purpose, and a bit of craftyness, these honeypots can be turned into “wild goose chase” machines intended to frustrate hackers. It's just one in a fat bag of psychological tricks that's getting fatter. Unfortunately, wild goose chase machines and other disincentives are beyond the scope of this essay and are the subject of another article to come. So upgrade your anti-virus, don't open that email attachment, ask for proof before you give out your password, and stay tuned.[disenchanted.com]
I too, have seen the myriad warnings regarding klez. Warnings that are from somebody who thinks that I have the klez virus but doesn't realize that klez randomizes the sender from the host's address book. I'm on the verge of taking the advice of my friend Larry Rogers, who works at CERT; building a virtualized system in which the bottom layer is linux, windows runs on VMWare for the stuff that won't work anywhere else, and mail is delivered via Evolution. I've even got my wife ready to make the switch!
Posted at: 22:34 | permalink
