On 2004.01.29 13:20 Shannon Roddy wrote: > You can feel free to rifle through my mail server logs under some sort > of an NDA. Would have to see about that. Don't think you will find > anything except for randomness though. Problem is that the mail server > logs are NOT what you want since that only tells half (less?) of the > story. You would need to inspect the address books of all of the > source machines, etc. > > Anyway, I must have gone to sleep a couple days ago and woke up in a > parallel universe if M$ is sending out viruses now. I know they are > greedy, no good, arrogant pieces of shit, but come on dude, I don't > think they would start using the weaknesses of their own operating > system to make linux users look bad. The only thing they get in the > long run is a black eye and more people migrating away. > > I can see an inkling of a possibility that their OS had something to do > with the north east power outages, but this!? I still think that they > paid the right people to not make a big issue out of the monitoring > systems being down. But this is totally different. We all know that > Winblows is a crappy OS, but I think releasing viruses intentionally is > beneath even them. > > I think the contest for zealotry is over now, please return to your > regularly scheduled mailing list. :-) > > Shannon >
Thanks, I'd like to do that. The story will tell itself as we look. The behavior I'm looking for is a machine that does not have your address anywhere on it spoofing you. If you can show that just once, some kind of co-operation of this virus with itself or a central server will be established. A preference for your address in spoofing might be explained by the prevalence of your address in address books and it would be interesting to show a correlation. I'll sign an appropriate NDA to have the chance to look things over. You have not fallen into a parallel universe, Microsoft breaks their own software and blames it on others routinely. Viruses can be seen as part of the upgrade cycle, just like DLL hell. The company that blamed Sun for the death of Windows 98 would be happy to blame Linux "hackers" for the demise of 98. Do you remember the way they killed DrDOS (http://www.kickassgear.com/Articles/Microsoft.htm) OS/2 (http://www.infoanarchy.org/?op=displaystory;sid=2001/10/23/17629/221) Lotus, Netscape, Word Perfect .... freaking everything on their platform (http://www.kmfms.com/whatsbad.html)? You would think that each of those breaks would give Microsoft a black eye, but they managed to blame their competition in every case! Free software is a little harder for them to kill, but the basics are the same, FUD, break, malign. You can count of Microsoft to get up to their old tricks and make free software on their own platform look bad, that's SOP for them. What's different with free software is that anyone can use it without outside of Microsoft's control. The best way for them to keep people from going there, they can try to malign free software users. Microsoft is funding SCO's attempt to steal all free software and malign all free software users as thieves. Their own polls showed that the rhetoric backfired on them when they used it themselves. Using a surrogate is a traditional part of Microsoft's strategy as well. Microsoft does not extort millions of dollars from public school systems, the BSA does, right? It's possible that this virus was written by a spamming outfit, but the press blamed it on free software zealots (http://edition.cnn.com/2004/TECH/internet/01/27/mydoom.spread/) (http://money.cnn.com/2004/01/27/technology/techinvestor/lamonica/index.htm?cnn). Those have got to be the best headlines and stories that a few billion dollars of advertising can buy, "Ask the experts at Sophos" Given Microsoft's past their authoring this and other worms would not surprise me at all. Doing so and blaming it on their latest competitive threat would be par performance. If they do it enough, they will create a crisis vehicle to get some really nasty legislation passed. All Joe sixpacks can see is that his email and internet are broken and CNN just told him it was Linux's fault. Someone at Bits Technical actually told me that the worm was "written in Linux". I can imagine Sir Gates riding to the rescue and it's not pretty. Oh yeah, I do think Microsoft and other ISPs spam each other. They may do it through surrogates, but I think they do it. I just can't believe that there are so many penis enlarger and viagra scam companies out there. While running a spam server might be profitable and there may be thousands of want to be profitable money losers, where does the money come from in the first place? Are there really billions of dollars worth of penis enlargers to pay for all this filthy spam? Why should we believe that a scofflaw company known to break competitors software is above spamming a competing ISP? Once again, the big ISPs are in the best position to gain from legislated solutions the spam problem. Those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it. Those who do know history are doomed to know that they are repeating history and it makes them irritable. It's almost as bad as having to use Windoze at work. Though this be madness, yet there is method in it.
