Posted on 9-4-2002
Laugh
Them Off
Edited by Alan Marston from original at SecurityFocus.com
If you're going to hang around the Internet for any length of
time, it
helps to develop a sense of humor. Life is brief, all too brief
for
spending one's time scowling.
If your e-mail address is distributed around the world in enough
Microsoft
Outlook address books, you can expect viruses and spam, they
go with the
territory. Sure you can rage against the machine, but no-one
but you will
care, and your karma notches up another crease to be ironed
out later in
your's or some other sentient beings brief existence. Old coot's
voice:
"Yep, I remember, Sonny, when we didn't actually get mailed
the Top Ten
viruses each week! But now those days are gone -- eh-eh. I think
we're just
gonna have to take Old Blue The Virus Epidemiologist out to
the pasture and
put 'im down. It's the merciful thing."
By now you may be thinking that I get quite a few viruses in
the mail, and
that I think they're funny. This is only partially true. Style
and elegance
are no longer twin fortes of virus-writing mountebanks. Time
was when the
Casino virus jumped out of the blackness of the screen and actually
played
a game of roulette with you before trashing your data. That
fired the
imagination! Now the day begins with a dull file in the mailbox
with the
name "You are FAT!" Yes, I'll be sure to double-click on that
right away,
sir. I am constantly reminded that many people, apparently every
bit as
intellectually inelastic as malicious code writers, do bite
on these
doltish come-ons. However, they don't work for me... seventy
times a day
they don't work. Without automatic execution, there's no chance
things like
"Look,my beautiful girl friend [sic]," "Let's be friends," and,
my
favorite, "introduction on ADSL" are going anywhere not defined
by the
delete key.
But it might just be me - eccentric, outsider, happy with my
own company,
cynical as the day is long - that is not tempted to open these
emails.
Maybe I don't have a problem because I'm way at the left-hand
end of the
normalised curve of personas. Maybe I am the problem! Executing
viruses is
normal, raging at spam is normal. In that case my argument falls
on deaf
ears, in essence it is saying don't follow the crowd, stand
up for
yourself, be dis-trusting, not interested in a quick (bfl)uck.
The Internet
is hardening us against strangers, such is the price of becoming
part of a
huge free/unregulated community.
If the price of Internet freedom is 10mins a day deleting spam
and viruses,
play on.
The general line on the subject is that spam and viruses matter,
matter a
great deal because too many hijacked PCs can flood the system
into
dysfunction. However, as far as practical matters go, I already
get, and
have for some time, many viruses from total strangers, many
of whom seem to
be real saps. A few more or less isn't a difference, just more
junk in the
inbox to delete. And I think that it is this way for many. Call
them a
silent majority, a mass which employs its own rules-based anti-virus
measures, deleting anything and everything that smells even
faintly stupid
or time-wasting. To survive the daily flood of electronic garbage
--
viruses, spam or foolish messages from certified ninnies and
professional
annoyances -- everyone builds up personal armour that includes
a strong
bull-detector and a joy in giving the waste can a workout.
Which leaves me with one question, rhetorical if you like, for
the virus
trackers. What's the ratio of unreported viruses deleted by
hand by the
skeptical to the number of those reported to lists?
|