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Blaster Boy a Typical Teen?

Wired has an article titled “Blaster Suspect a Typical Teen?” saying that a friend of the kid that was arrested for releasing a variant of the MSBlaster worm is “just a kid” who is likely innocent.

Innocent? Uhm, no. You don’t “accidentally” download a virus and modify the code, re-releasing it onto the internet. Sure he may not have had malicious intentions, hoping to cause millions and millions of dollars worth of damages to computers worldwide, but he still did it, no matter the reason. He probably just finished reading a virus writing tutorial on some hacking web site, and thought he’d try his hand at modifying the latest and greatest worm currently floating around. Which would probably explain why he has been caught, and the original virus writer has not (yet).

Like many young computer geeks, I was interested in the hacking sub-culture for a year or two when I was like 13. It’s easy to get into when you are young. It gives you the feeling of being a “rebel” just by look at hacking web sites, without actually having to go out of your house to do anything “dangerous” like spray grafitti on a wall or vandalize your school. Instead you can sit in your own house at your own desk with your own computer, run a little program to deface web sites or send email viruses, and still have your mom cook dinner for you. In hacker-culture, your popularity is not based on how cool you look or how good you are at sports or who you hang out with. It’s usually the coolness of your nickname, and the accompanying graphic that you use at the bottom of all your posts on hacker messageboards. It’s a great way for nerds to feel cool I guess.

I never did anything malicious at all when I was into it. Mostly just reading and looking around at different messageboards, enjoying the “culture” more than actually doing anything. But it seems to be even easier to get into today, with many programs out there to launch email attacks, Denial of Service attacks on web sites, etc at the push of a button.

Today I am not amused with all these viruses floating around. My home computer got hit with both of the worms that went around recently, and my wife’s email account is still getting slammed with hundreds of messages a day from the virus. My dad’s computer was down for 4 days, making it impossible for him to do business for that period of time. I spent an entire morning updating all our computers at work to prevent them from being affected, when I should have been using the computer to work and make money instead of keeping viruses out. When I was at Best Buy the other day I saw a 70 year old woman spending $50 to buy Norton Antivirus, probably because she saw something on the news about worms and viruses destroying her computer; or maybe she already had the worm and someone told her to buy Norton to get it off.

That is just unacceptable. I am so damn fed up with Windows and Microsoft products in general that it makes me sick. I cannot understand why people keep buying PC’s, why they keep upgrading Office every year, why they go back to Dell again and again. I’m writing this on a PC, because that’s what we have at work. Why? Because that’s just what my boss thought he needed. He probably heard from some PC nerd that Macs are for kids or that they can’t run Office or something. I am working very hard to change that however, and use every possible chance to explain to him why the Mac is better. I think me spending half a day patching up security holes last week will help my cause considerably. In fact I have worked it out with him to get a 12” Powerbook for me to use. If it works with all of our printers and everything, we’ll eventually sell all the PC’s and get Macs. So thank goodness for that.

Here’s an interesting article from Mac Observer, which states that out of over 71,000 viruses listed in the Network Associates database, zero affect Mac OSX. Yes, zero. There are 500 or so that affect Mac OS9, but all but 30 of those are flaws in Microsoft Word, allowing macro viruses to execute. So even on the old MacOS, 95% of the viruses on the system were Microsoft’s fault. Plus the other 70,500 viruses in the database that affect Windows.

Anyway, this post has touched on too many topics already. I didn’t mean to get so carried away, I just wanted to talk about that virus kid getting busted! Oh well.

To sum up, John Gruber expresses my feelings more clearly and eloquently than I ever could in an articled entitled Good Times. Do yourself a favor, read it. (and the follow-up, Dynomite)

Update Oh look, Microsoft just announced a whole new bundle of critical security flaws, great!

hey….I have a mac ;)

i loooooooove macs… at last count i have 7.

a guy in my building has a 15” TiBook for sale right now… must… have…. it….

i’m not really much of a mac evangilist though… i don’t people they should switch over… they’ll figure it out on their own eventually…

i’m sure linux is just as good as a microsoft alternative, but i have no experience with it….

Last time I tried linux it was pretty darn hard to use. Plus it has none of the major graphics applications. Not really an alternative for me. Can’t wait to get a Mac though! :)

OS X is your friend. I’ve tried them all, Linux, Windows , OS/2 and just love OS X. My former favortie (pre-mac) was either Windows 2000 or OS/2.

I’m now using Windows 2k on a temp basis and shocked at how bad windows really is. The usability isn’t there and you have to work to get small things working. not fun….