Nato warns of strike against cyber attackers

Wed Jun 9 12:11:01 UTC 2010

No, but we can and do require cars to have functional brakes and minimum tread depths, and to be tested periodically.

Obviously this is acceptable because the failure modes for cars are worse, but the proposed solution is less intrusive being after the fact.

Excuse topposting, on mobile.

"Joe Greco" <jgreco at ns.sol.net> wrote:

>> So? If said end customer is operating a network-connected system without
>> sufficient knowledge to properly maintain it and prevent it from doing mischief
>> to the rest of the network, why should the rest of us subsidize her negligence?
>> I don't see where making her pay is a bad thing.
>
>I see that you don't understand that.
>
>> The internet may be a vast ocean where bad guys keep dumping garbage,
>> but, if software vendors stopped building highly exploitable code and ISPs
>> started disconnecting abusing systems rapidly, it would have a major effect
>> on the constantly changing currents. If abuse departments were fully funded
>> by cleanup fees charged to negligent users who failed to secure their systems
>> properly, it would both incentivize users to do proper security _AND_ provide
>> for more responsive abuse departments as issues are reduced and their
>> budget scales linearly with the amount of abuse being conducted.
>
>The reality is that things change.  Forty-three years ago, you could still
>buy a car that didn't have seat belts.  Thirty years ago, most people still
>didn't wear seat belts.  Twenty years ago, air bags began appearing in
>large volume in passenger vehicles.  Throughout this period, cars have been
>de-stiffened with crumple zones, etc., in order to make them safer for
>passengers in the event of a crash.  Mandatory child seat laws have been
>enacted at various times throughout.  A little more than ten years ago, air
>bags were mandatory.  Ten years ago, LATCH clips for child safety seats
>became mandatory.  We now have side impact air bags, etc.
>
>Generally speaking, we do not penalize car owners for owning an older car,
>and we've maybe only made them retrofit seat belts (but not air bags,
>crumple zones, etc) into them, despite the fact that some of those big old
>boats can be quite deadly to other drivers in today's more easily-damaged
>cars.  We've increased auto safety by mandating better cars, and by
>penalizing users who fail to make use of the safety features.
>
>There is only so much "proper security" you can expect the average PC user
>to do.  The average PC user expects to be able to check e-mail, view the
>web, edit some documents, and listen to some songs.  The average car driver
>expects to be able to drive around and do things.  You can try to mandate
>that the average car driver must change their own oil, just as you can try
>to mandate that the average computer must do what you've naively referred
>to as "proper security", but the reality is that grandma doesn't want to 
>get under her car, doesn't have the knowledge or tools, and would rather 
>spend $30 at SpeedyLube.  If we can not make security a similarly easy
>target for the end-user, rather than telling them to "take it in to
>NerdForce and spend some random amount between $50 and twice the cost of
>a new computer," then we - as the people who have designed and provided 
>technology - have failed, and we are trying to pass off responsibility 
>for our collective failure onto the end user.
>
>I'm all fine with noting that certain products are particularly awful.
>However, we have to be aware that users are simply not going to be required
>to go get a CompSci degree specializing in risk management and virus
>cleansing prior to being allowed to buy a computer.  This implies that our
>operating systems need to be more secure, way more secure, our applications
>need to be less permissive, probably way less permissive, probably even
>sandboxed by default, our networks need to be more resilient to threats,
>ranging from simple things such as BCP38 and automatic detection of certain
>obvious violations, to more comprehensive things such as mandatory virus
>scanning by e-mail providers, etc., ...  there's a lot that could be done,
>that most on the technology side of things have been unwilling to commit
>to.
>
>We can make their Internet cars safer for them - but we largely haven't.
>Now we can all look forward to misguided government efforts to mandate
>some of this stuff.
>
>... JG
>-- 
>Joe Greco - sol.net Network Services - Milwaukee, WI - http://www.sol.net
>"We call it the 'one bite at the apple' rule. Give me one chance [and] then I
>won't contact you again." - Direct Marketing Ass'n position on e-mail spam(CNN)
>With 24 million small businesses in the US alone, that's way too many apples.
>

-- 
Sent from my Android phone with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity.