[RTC List] 60 Minutes story: The Internet is Infected

[Anna Kircher]

I suspect the perpetrators of this virus have little interest in the kinds of data that individuals or small businesses store on their systems, and so I would be very surprised to see this type of malware make much noise in our corner of the world.  But ... multi-national banks? large credit card processors? large utilities?  the federal government? the military?  Now *those* systems might represent interesting sources of (a) data or (b) mischief for organized crime. (And short of total collapse, legal mandate or unavoidable visibility, those folks will  never tell you if they were hit . *If* they even knew.) 



And make no mistake - this sort of potential mayhem is coordinated and actively pursued by organized crime.  The last time I heard a presentation about the-state-of-computer-hacking from a knowledgeable source (about a year ago), their report was that international organized crime now makes more money from digital identity theft than they do from guns, prostitution and drugs combined.  T hey aren't obtaining that volume of data one or two records at a time; they're stealing/buying it by the tens-of- thousands. 



To the exent that these types of incidents cause us to update our anti-virus dat files, refresh our O/S patches, and scan our systems, I think they're a worthwhile nudge out of our complacency.  While we who  frequent a technical listerv like this one may be diligent about protecting our systems, I remain totally dumbfounded by the number of people "out there" who ought to know better and simply don't protect their vital systems at all. 



Anna 



Anna Kircher 

Chief Information Officer 

Humboldt State University 



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Date: Wed, 1 Apr 2009 15:43:52 -0700 (PDT) 
From: "William Van Hefner" < vantek at humboldtonline.com > 
Subject: Re: [RTC List] 60 Minutes story:  The Internet is Infected 
To: list at redwoodtech.org 

Did ANYONE out there ever encounter this supposedly killer April 1st 
virus? I haven't gone through my mail server antivirus logs, but it sounds 
like yet another virus where more harm was done through the lost 
productivity and lost bandwidth associated with getting all excited about 
it than could have possibly resulted from any actual harm that the virus 
might have done. I wonder if 60 minutes ever tried researching how much 
time/money was wasted as a result of virus hysteria? I'm guessing that 
probably wouldn't help them in the ratings as much as scaring people 
though. 

-- 
William Van Hefner - President 
Vantek Communications, Inc. 
e-mail: editor at humboldtonline.com 



Anna Kircher 
Chief Information Officer 
Humboldt State University 
One Harpst Street 
Arcata, CA 95521 
707-826-3815 
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