escaped my attention, but anything that comes under Bruce Schneier’s notice is worth noting: The Witty worm: A new chapter in malware. In Computerworld. “Witty was a big deal. It represented some scary malware firsts and is likely a harbinger of worms to come. ”
Matt Haughey
has written a nice up-to-the-moment summary of wireless local network security issues. The basic conclusion: there are security issues all over the pace, but there is no simple way to give yourself a truly secure net at this time.
The Register
is but one of many who are commenting on the new EULA that comes with a security patch issued by Microsoft the other day. Thomas C Greene writes in this piece: “What they feed you may be infected with viruses; it may break your applications, corrupt data files, destroy weeks or months or even years of work, but you’ll have no recourse if it does.”
Tom Coates
says it’s not enough simply to mourn. I wish it were otherwise, but I agree with him entirely on this point. We are in the midst of a period of extreme danger, and thinking, feeling people must gather up the strength to fight all forces who would use this for their shallow, fundamentalist, outrageous political goals.
Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson have already blamed this on gays and lesbians and a general moral lassitude in the US (and presumably in the West in general). This is absolutely wrong, and although we may hurt, we cannot just let objectionable, fundamentalist views such as that to slide without remark.
Many people (Jish being but one) are reporting mistreatment of people who are or are taken to be Arabs. This is unconscionable, and if you’re a thinking person, you know it’s unacceptable. Do something about it, if you are a witness to such behaviour.
As we speak, politicians are meeting to discuss serious curbs on speech that are certainly unwise and arguably unconstitutional. Like the Son of Star Wars in the military arena, laws such as this would do little do deal with any security problems leading up to a tragedy such as the one this week – and yet, liberty will likely come under attack though little, if any, evidence has been or will be put forward to justify these laws.
It is a time to mourn and grieve. It is also a time to speak out, and to act.
More on the
Security Systems Standards and Certification Act from Wired News’ Declan McCullagh: Hollywood Loves Hollings’ Bill.
“If this would go forward, it would be a huge gift for the fair-use community. It would be right up there with Sklyarov,” says Jaszi, talking about the outcry the DMCA prosecution of Russian programmer Dmitry Sklyarov has caused. “It would be an amazing mobilizing tool.”
