In comp.os.linux.advocacy, Roy Schestowitz
<newsgroups@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote
on Thu, 04 Sep 2008 23:13:32 +0000
<2774250.jX8IJBSIAd@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>:
>
> ____/ Sinister Midget on Thursday 04 September 2008 22:58 : \____
>
>> On 2008-09-04, bbgruff <bbgruff@xxxxxxxxxxx> claimed:
>>> Oh dear - I do hope that you Linux loonies aren't responsible for this....
>>>
>>> "The summer saw a surge in the number of hijacked home PCs or "zombies", say
>>> security experts"
>>>
>>> "The Shadowserver Foundation, which tracks zombie numbers worldwide, said it
>>> had seen at least a threefold increase in the last three months"
>>>
>>> Ah! .... but wait!
>>> We got the BBC to highlight the real culprits, remember?
>>> It goes on:-
>>>
>>> "The vast majority of machines in these botnets will be PCs running a
>>> version of Microsoft *Windows* "!
>>
>> It seems Winders is the most popularplatform among zombies, too. In
>> fact, I'd bet the percentage is very near 100.
>>
>>> - so maybe you guys are off the hook?
>>> ... - or are you? After all, it's A Well Known Fact that only 3 people in
>>> the world use Linux (me, you, and Linus), so it's small consolation that we
>>> only "contribute" between 0 and 3 machines to this, is it?
>>>
>>> (Somebody tell me where they get the 450,000 from? It that actually "active
>>> at any one time", I wonder?)
>>
>> They covered themselves: "More than 450,000 computers are now part of
>> zombie networks....." The "more than" part includes numbers such as
>> 35,000,000,000,000 and 450,001. So I'd hazard they have a fairly
>> accurate number there.
>>
>>> http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7596676.stm
>
> This explains why over 120 billion items SPAM circulate per day. That's enough
> to feed every human on the planet over 20 "Delete presses" per day.
>
> What is the speed of spam? 7.8 billion messages per hour!
Assuming 450,000 zombots, that works out to 4.8 messages per second
per bot. Not all that much though they do add up...and there's
the additional issue that an uplink mailserver may be helpfully
contributing by processing a large comma-delimited To: list,
depending on how the bot herder system is set up.
>
> ,----[ Quote ]
> | Spam volumes have doubled, and the Srizbi botnet alone was seen to be capable
> | of pumping out an astonishing 7.8 billion messages an hour. That is probably
> | worth repeating: 7.8 BILLION spams every single hour!
> `----
>
> http://www.itwire.com/content/view/19992/1054/
>
> Bots rule in cyberspace
>
> ,----[ Quote ]
> | USA TODAY REPORTS that on an average day, 40 per cent of the 800 million
> | computers connected to the Internet are bots used to send out spam, viruses
> | and to mine for sensitive personal data.
> `----
>
> http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2008/03/17/bots-rule-cyberspace
450000 / .40 = 1.1M, which is far lower than the 250M or
so PCs worldwide.
Color me a little puzzled on that one.
>
> "Spam will be a thing of the past in two years? time."
>
> --Bill Gates, 2004
He wishes.
>
>
> "There are no significant bugs in our released software that any significant
> number of users want fixed."
>
> --Bill Gates, 1995
He's right as far as that goes...the usual exploit
is invisible until someone finds or stumbles upon it.
It's not like everyone goes out of his way to find buffer
overflows and such.
>
>
> "The Internet? We are not interested in it."
>
> --Bill Gates, 1993
Why should they be? It's a means to an end -- making
money. At least they've since changed their tune, and
released IE 2, 3, 4, 5, 5.5, 6, 7, and (almost) 8, and
innumerable patches in between.
>
>
> "Like almost everyone who uses e-mail, I receive a ton of
> spam every day. Much of it offers to help me get out of
> debt or get rich quick. It would be funny if it weren't so irritating."
>
> --Bill Gates
Date?
>
>
>
> - --
> "There's a lot of Linux out there -- much more than Microsoft
> generally signals publicly -- and their customers are
> using it..." --Paul DeGroot, a Directions On Microsoft analyst.
--
#191, ewill3@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Linux. Because it's not the desktop that's
important, it's the ability to DO something
with it.
** Posted from http://www.teranews.com **
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