Presidential Re-Election through fear mongering

July 31, 2003 10:36 PM

The Last Stage of Delirium Research Group (LSD-PLaNET) have posted code on the Internet that can allow hackers to exploit a previously disclosed vulnerability in Microsoft's Windows operating system. This kind of thing happens all the time. What never happened before is a widespread government and media panic perpetuating the buffer overrun threat as terroristic in nature, originating from the Department of Homeland Security and upsetting the gerneral public at large.
posted by jdaura (6 comments total)

I know there are legitimate reasons for the DHS to be concerned about this sort of thing, but this case sounds like another example of mission-creep.
posted by homunculus at 11:41 PM on July 31, 2003

The DHS sure does have a great seal though:

"The eagle's wings break through the inner circle into the outer ring to suggest that the Department of Homeland Security will break through traditional bureaucracy and perform government functions differently."

Wow.
posted by homunculus at 11:45 PM on July 31, 2003

Oh that constitution. What a mess of bureaucracy.
posted by jazzkat11 at 11:50 PM on July 31, 2003

We got hit with this where I work, actually. Wasn't pretty. A few XP users in our building hadn't run the patch (some of these same users had decided to just turn off automatic updating). So far only about 6 computers of nearly 200 in our department were affected, but another department on campus here had nearly 150 computers affected. Ouch. The solution? You have to erase the user's drive and start all over from scratch.
posted by josephtate at 11:59 PM on July 31, 2003

Wow, a malicious worm. I'm completely bewildered by the fact that melissa, code red, etc didn't have a seriously nasty payload. It seems like the virus authors just wanted propagation for bragging rights. It wouldn't be so tough to write a function that will corrupt the registry or start formatting important parts of the disk after x amount of hours.

Windows has yet to see a serious threat by a popular worm and when it does there will be a lot of heat on Microsoft, whether they deserve it or not. "Wintel everywhere" is a classic eggs in one basket gambit and heads are going to roll if 1/3rd of all computers on the internet suddenly refuse to boot up again. Something like 40% (?) of all computers on the net are not behind a firewall and who knows how many are patched.

What I'm afraid of is that if something this bad and on this scale happens then DRM will go from controversial content protection to a Tom Ridge mandated upgrade. Your computer WILL download the newest patch and you will not rip MP3s from the newest Shania Twain CD or face the consequences (ISP banning you, fines, etc).
posted by skallas at 12:40 AM on August 1, 2003

This is why any ecosystem with only one dominate species is an unhealthy one.
posted by moonbiter at 6:41 AM on August 1, 2003