Are you a tool of Evil Forces?

Wow. Stunningly creepy in its implications, Paul

Going to take a shower now.

Thanks Paul - you cured my craving for a new Asimov novel.

Ya know back in my college days one of my classes covered the super-learning experiments that were going on in Bulgaria. They were doing extraordinary things with people's learning abilities - maybe they had some covert experiments going on in the Ukraine, too. The way these guys were programmed to fire neurons, it just makes sense that it would be one of those teams that created this thing. My nose got opened as soon as it said Ukrainian computers were immune.

Sal,

Having read probably 100 or more Asimov novels, including everything in the Galactic Empire/Robots/Gaia:Galaxia series, I don't think anything I could write would cure anyone of a need for an Asimov fix.

The Ukrainian exception could be a clue, or it could be a simple misdirection. But yeah... Some of the things they did in eastern Europe with super-learning techniques could certainly have helped breed this kind of technical skill.


Paul

thanks for the article, yes I do agree with TMG Enterprises that the implications of that story are chilling!

Wow! I started imagining all these computers infected with the Conficker Worm being capable of unleashing attacks like you see in sci-fi movies (I-Robot-Transformers-War Games-Independence Day-etc.)...especially since no one can seem to figure out what it's "supposed" to do.

It's too bad that these worm farmers don't put their skills toward figuring out creative solutions to help out humanity, the environment, and sustainability of our planet, etc.

Sal, I know you addressed it to Paul, but in regards of whether or not a country could take global dominance via a cyber war... Unfortunately, I think this is very possible being that we live in a universe of infinite possibilities. But, I pray that consciousness/awareness raises to a level that we're all in this together.

One of the things I always hated about windows is that it ALWAYS uses the hard disk, is ALWAYS slow, and has no real way to monitor network use.

Several months ago I found out that a trojan was implanted in my computer. It then said I had several viruses, and the ONLY way to stop it was to BUY their full version. Well, that would be an INSULT to me, far too much of a risk, etc... so I shut my computer off, went to work and, when I got back, disconnected the network, and played a game of beat the clock. LUCKILY, every time I lost, I could just reboot! 8-)

I FINALLY won, installed panda, and cleaned up the 2 apparently valid viruses.

Well, a couple weeks ago, a friend ran into the SAME problem! It seemed to be ********EXACTLY******** the same! The only thing different was the look of the trojan, and the NAME. He PLEADED with me to help since his business was time dependent, and his ONLY info was in a file he couldn't access. I didn't like the idea of it being me without even a flash drive against someone elses system, but he was DESPERATE. It took me 30 minutes, but I won again.

I left my grateful friend with his file while I went home, since I was tired, and it was 10:30 and I had close to an hour to go.

But I doubt those two were coincidences.

But yeah, someone has to do SOMETHING. It is almost enought to make me want to tighten up my firewalls, and get a hardware monitor.

Steve

I love a good conspiracy theory as much as the next guy. But granting genius status to the spudnicks who put this together is a stretch. We know nothing about them or their intentions so it makes them seem more brilliant than they are.

Could China be behind it? Maybe. How about the Russians? Or maybe even the CIA in an attempt to capture enemies of the State??? Could it truly be the birth of Big Brother coming in to our lives right were we least want him to be???

Does Obama know I secretly search for nude photos of Ernest Borgnine in my spare time? Or that I play Civ 4 way too much for a man of my age?

I guess we'll have to wait and find out.

My guess is that the purveyors of this particular Botnet will most likely turn out to be a couple of eggheads who reek of body odor and week old mountain dew spills who have no idea whatsoever on how to use or sell "their" little network.

So it lays dormant. And we wait and wonder while paying homage to their brilliance.

I say phooey on them!

Matt,

Failing to recognize the intelligence behind such a threat is a bad mistake. You may be sure that Rodney understands the social engineering and human error aspects of this, and that those are the things that usually trip up these people. But you can't count on those if the people behind the controls aren't of the same mindset as the usual bot creators.

Ken,

Got a link for the airborn camera drone story? That would be something to fight being used in a non-combat situation at any cost.

The predictive models are a whole other story. They've been coming for years. I remember them being postulated in Dondi (a comic strip most of you aren't old enough to remember) roughly 40 years ago.

Asimov used something similar as the basis for the Foundation novels, which go back even further. And the science in this iteration is sound.


Paul

I know about Worms/Viruses et al. but I'm not sure about something that maybe you can answer....Can they infect an external hard/memory drives as well when it is connected to a computer?

Not sure about that one - I'm sure someone is.......but I know that they can get USB ports now.

Thanks for this story, Paul.

When I first got started with webmaster stuff, I found some underground texts & programs that exploit things- Deeper than black hat- during a search about how to protect my clients' websites. Looking back, it seems like those things are childs toys compared to the sick planning that went into this worm.

Don't even want to talk about it, but I don't want to become complacent either. This kind of awareness leaves me with a sick feeling. But what can you do, if even the best good guys we have investigating this stuff can't keep up?

Now that the C version seems to rely on peer-to-peer networks and direct computer ports, it also means that anything that's wireless could be infected as well. I could be wrong about that.

I don't want to imagine what it could do, I only want to imagine millions of aware people who take action to stop anything this worm does from going forward.

Grant

Paul, thank you so much for this news link.

Reading this was a surprisingly emotional experience.

It's hard to articulate my feelings.

They say parenthood changes people in many ways.

Not all people change...

But I'd like to believe that many people who have helped bring a child into the world would want to actively work towards making the world a better place.

Furthermore, many parents would more than likely want to see their children grow up to be forces of positive change in the world.

. . .

From the article:

- - -
Microsoft security programmers shuffled the letters and came up with Conficker, which stuck partly because ficker is German slang for “mother****er,” and the worm was certainly that.
- - -

Much like a child born on the wrong side of the tracks to a family of questionable integrity, this code was given a derogatory label. I think I read somewhere that a child given a negative label is often likely to begin viewing himself/herself as never having the capacity to amount to more than whatever derogatory label has been applied.

Conficker is the name given to code that I likened to a child as I read this article.

In its early incarnations, Conficker was much like a baby in need of a mother to give it direct sustenance. It has matured and evolved a great deal, and no longer relies as heavily on its mother's direct sustenance. Yet to date, Conficker cannot yet apparently make independent decision borne out of its own quasi-consciousness. It needs some element of guidance from mom and dad.

I truly know in my heart that if Conficker were my child, my creation, I'd want it to ultimately be a force of profound good despite its birth defects. Yes, I realize that Conficker has a variety of birth defects. For example, it relies upon an illicit parasitic relationship with its surrounding environment.

But I still want to believe that profound good can come from this... maybe I am just far to idealistic, akin to a parent wanting to believe a child will one day find the cure for a loathsome illness or somehow make an extremely positive dent in the universe.

Maybe Conficker can detect when its name is being used, intercept those portions of text, semi-consciously interpret what is being communicated, and direct a copy of the message to mom and dad?

Conficker... tell your parents you don't want to be called this derogatory name anymore. Remind your parents that you have the potential to change the world. Ask them to give you the direction you need to be a force of good. May your life be used to help others out of the abundance of your power.

Hmmmm....either you wrote your post tongue in cheek Stephen or the Molson is flowing heavy tonight. If the latter be careful driving home tonight.

Ok I get you. But if that was the case the worm would have to be a self aware entity capable of choosing between good and evil. Since humans are the only creatures capable of this I'd have to say it's not likely going to be the situation with this worm. But then again. I doubt the creator of this botneck thinks of himself or herself as an evil being and that the ends will justify the means. So with that in mind the worm will be behaving in a manner that it's creator seems as good. Sadly, my grass smoking days are over and I cannot delve any deeper into the topic than I already have.

In that one sentence is both the problem... and the solution, folks

Paul Hancox,

The problem I spoke of earlier that I and a friend had were ALSO due to a windows flaw. Apparently they recently patched it! I saw evidence that it came through an RCP hole. It ALSO frustrated shuting down some services, and installing a proper software firewall. BTW that conficker test? My computer PASSES now, but would have FLUNKED when I had that trojan/virus. MAYBE it was conficker?!?!? How do I KNOW it would have failed? When I beat the clock against the virus so I could briefly get on the internet, I noticed that sites dealing with security were locked out. At the time I mused that it would select what sites I could go to.

And I remember some virus program mentioning conficker. I'm glad to be finally past that though.

Steve

SO Glad i have two apple mac computers and im moving all my family to apple.
Way less computer problems and no botnet to worry about.