[Linux-aus] Re: [Osia-discuss] New PITA virus going around

[Leon Brooks <leon@cyberknights.com.au>]

On Monday 27 June 2005 12:32, Steven D'Aprano wrote:

I take your point, but:

> Suppose there was some black-hat sitting in Romania or Bulgeria or
> Nigeria or somewhere, running a room full of Linux machines. He is
> sending out millions of faked emails every minute. If administrators
> wrongly blacklist people on the basis of those faked emails, would
> you be happy to blame Linus Torvalds and/or Richard Stallman for the
> problem, on the basis that it was Linux and GNU tools that allowed
> the emails to be sent?

That's not a useful experiment. If he were using *other*people's* Linux 
boxes to do the spamming, then sure. But he's not, and *can't* - at 
least, not to anything like the same extent - which is the key point.

If he's using his own boxes, regardless of OS, we can track him down and 
hammer him in various ways. Trey's bass-ackwards business priorities 
allow the black-hat to enlist countless unwilling, unwitting proxies in 
his social crime.

It would be *so* simple for Microsoft to badge-engineer Thunderbird and 
bolt on enough extras in separate non-GPL plugins to bring it up to 
LookOut's functionality (from their PoV) levels without the same 
security issues. But the same social and "business" reasons that built 
the abomination of desolation in the first place prevent that.

Cheers; Leon

-- 
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