Ah but the caveat here is that it is a federal mandate brought down on the
ISPs leaving them without the option to back down. I am interested in seeing
just how the government will choose to enforce/enact such wide-sweeping
legislation.



On Mon, Jan 25, 2010 at 3:10 PM, Dave Dennis <[email protected]> wrote:

> > On Mon, Jan 25, 2010 at 2:20 PM, Thomas Raef
> > <[email protected]>wrote:
> >
> > >
> http://tech.slashdot.org/story/10/01/25/1458231/Australian-ISPs-To-Disconnect-Botnet-Zombies?from=rss&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Slashdot%2Fslashdot+%28Slashdot%29
> > > Please share your thoughts.
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > Thomas J. Raef
> > >
>
> The usual mess of uninformed, speculative, hearsay and panic on /.
>
> So.
>
> If the IsP is doing captive portal surfing and attempting to provide
> malware
> detection/cleaning tools, they have a noble purpose, but could run into
> interesting legal liability if the idiot home user managed to screw the
> pooch
> and make an unbootable system as a result.  The logic in the captive portal
> would possibly need to be bright enough to handle every besotted version of
> Windows from 95 to present, with all interop of old applications accounted
> for
> or at least not a concern.  Thats a tall ask.  So once they start breaking
> heretofore "not broken" (as far as the home user is concerned) systems,
> then
> what ?  Its easily provable the home user PC was infected due to
> traffic/signature/activity logged, but thats not going to mean anything to
> the
> home user if he/she can't boot up and play mafia wars.
>
> I think fwiw this is usually where the conversation breaks down in the USA
> on
> this subject: To do the home fix the infected PC dance actually takes a
> little
> bit more than just malware removal: it takes behavior modification, it
> takes
> browser locking down / ad network blocking, it takes somehow coming up with
> a
> fix to years of really poor decisions on the part of the user, who
> presumably is
> running an old, unpatched, botched registry full of half-uninstalled
> malware and
> spyware and various apps, any of which may or may not be able to withstand
> a
> thorough clean/replace of some fairly important DLL.
>
> So you get them to sign off on this, but their PC is mangled (to them)
> afterwards, now what.  Customer support beat down, loads of posts to
> various
> dumbass consumer sites like Consumerist, "My ISP Broke My Computer" and
> various
> crying youtubes later, and will the ISP have the balls to stick to their
> guns?
>
> Or will they back down and cave in?
>
> I don't see how they can avoid caving in.  Most users are monumentally
> uninformed with regard to spyware / malware, their own risk averse
> behavior, and
> what even happened a week ago on the same PC.
>
>
> My .02
>
> -Dave D
>
>
>
> +-------------------------
> + Dave Dennis
> + Seattle, WA
> + Speakeasy, Inc.
> + [email protected]
> + http://www.speakeasy.net
> +-------------------------
> _______________________________________________
> Fun and Misc security discussion for OT posts.
> https://linuxbox.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/funsec
> Note: funsec is a public and open mailing list.
>
_______________________________________________
Fun and Misc security discussion for OT posts.
https://linuxbox.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/funsec
Note: funsec is a public and open mailing list.

Reply via email to