3 ms·

The use of eminent domain in the realm of the digital space is interesting to be sure. My first thought about killing the botnet is to do it asap. But we easily

by geuis 18y ago

The use of eminent domain in the realm of the digital space is interesting to be sure. My first thought about killing the botnet is to do it asap. But we easily start slipping into grey areas. If individuals do it, they are potentially breaking laws that otherwise normally provide protections to us against intrusion by corporate and government entities. If governments authorize it under the idea of public safety or eminent domain, that provides another legal gateway for governments to intrude on the privacy of your own data. For example, India has laws that give their police the power to "police" personal computers for pornography. We don't have that problem here in the US, but imagine that at some point in the future a conservative Congress allows the FCC to scan your computers and websites for porn like they regulate curse words and imagery on TV. It's all for the public good, is the argument. While most of us agree that botnets being run by criminals is bad, the traditional methods of police protecting us from gangs don't easily map to the internet and our personal data. We also run into problems because these botnets are worldwide. If the US government authorizes an entity to break up botnets, what about when some of the drone computers are property of foreign governments? If France decided to "fix" computers run by the DoD because the dumb desk jockey installed spyware on his work computer, there are a lot of people that would consider that a foreign attack on US government computers. I think the best way to handle this problem is via the OS vendors themselves. Because Microsoft/Apple make their operating systems, all users worldwide are basically agreeing to their EULAs when we turn the machines on. If the companies team up with these reseachers, then I believe they are perfectly within their rights to initiate this kind of operation. They are choosing to do security updates to their products. This then can work worldwide and not put us in danger of having government interference if our personal digital spaces and data.

dhimes 18y ago
Your point about the government taking advantage of a slippery slope is excellent. The OS vendors may be too powerful of a group (investor pressure can make them do things that wouldn't be considered benevolent). Perhaps third-party providers would be a better solution. At least then there would be a chance of responding to market pressure to be good. We would need some way to verify that our computers were "clean." Without this certificate (or whatever), we wouldn't be allowed access to web pages or http ports. But we would be free to get the cert from any vendor we could. Even with this method, there is a vulnerability to spoofing the certificate.
martey 18y ago
They are choosing to do security updates to their products. The article notes that since the virus was added to the list of malware removed by Microsoft's Malicious Software Removal Tool, the numbers of computers infected by it have shrunk significantly. This suggests that the computers will are still infected are those which are not choosing to apply security updates. Regardless of whether Microsoft would be "within its rights" to start something like this, it would still be liable for any damage caused to computers which became broken by the cleaning (see the next to last paragraph of the article).

by geuis 18y ago

dhimes 18y ago

Your point about the government taking advantage of a slippery slope is excellent. The OS vendors may be too powerful of a group (investor pressure can make them do things that wouldn't be considered benevolent). Perhaps third-party providers would be a better solution. At least then there would be a chance of responding to market pressure to be good. We would need some way to verify that our computers were "clean." Without this certificate (or whatever), we wouldn't be allowed access to web pages or http ports. But we would be free to get the cert from any vendor we could. Even with this method, there is a vulnerability to spoofing the certificate.

martey 18y ago

They are choosing to do security updates to their products. The article notes that since the virus was added to the list of malware removed by Microsoft's Malicious Software Removal Tool, the numbers of computers infected by it have shrunk significantly. This suggests that the computers will are still infected are those which are not choosing to apply security updates. Regardless of whether Microsoft would be "within its rights" to start something like this, it would still be liable for any damage caused to computers which became broken by the cleaning (see the next to last paragraph of the article).