Folks: First, I really appreciate all the feedback. Most has been excellent.
About the only area that I fundamentally disagree with is sort of the
combination "it's my fault / M1 - AT&T is doing OK". Yes, I accept my share
of the responsibility but I really, REALLY think that M1/AT&T, who have the
resources, should be doing something to try to actually go after the
crackers. OK, I'm not just "an innocent victim" and I'm responsible for
putting my high performance sports car on the net but M1/AT&T owns the highway
and they certainly have capabilities and facilities that far outstrip what I
have on my Linux Firewall.
That said, my brother is a reporter and I can either get published or he can
get published. M1/AT&T is a monopoly and I think simply discontinuing
someones service "forever" and ignoring the "cracker" is not an appropriate
behavior. So please, any suggestions for writing to cover M1's
responsibility in all this? They're the only game in town and they're a major
player on the Internet. Are they really taking the most appropriate actions
and doing all they can to make the Internet safe for everyone?
Clearly I'm biased and I'm mad right now. But it really bothers me that M1
can have so little corporate responsibility for solving these problems. Yes,
they can just kick anyone off that get's caught port scanning but we all know
that this is not a permanent solution. The cracker will just crack another
box and nothing will have been done to correct the core problem.
Finally, I'm very concerned about the perception here that Linux is bad for
the Internet. True Windows is a brick and Linux a Porsche but people buying
stuff at Best Buy don't care about that. They just want to browse the web.
Remember the saying "guns don't kill people, people do" (FLAMES OFF, this was
not a political statement, merely an analogy). If a Linux box is more capable
of doing damage on the web then this is a PR or a perception issue that must
be addressed and yes, in my current job capacity that's exactly the types of
things I worry about. The perception here is that Linux is a loose cannon on
the Internet, if not properly bolted down and yet the average user has no idea
how to bolt it down, therefore Linux is inappropriate for the aveage user.
I don't know. Please feel free to comment away. I'll post what I write
before I send it to my brother.
Thanks for all your help.
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