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?