From: als at thangorodrim.de (Alexander Schreiber)
Subject: Calcuating Loss

On Tue, May 11, 2004 at 03:02:30PM -0700, Schmidt, Michael R. wrote:
> I think that part of the evolution is to lock people who create these
> things up for a *very* long time.  It will deter the script kittens 
> when they start to find that their computers are confiscated and their
> parents homes are sold to pay for the "loss" incurred by there 
> stupidity.  The real black hats will be deterred when 20 FBI/CIA whoever
> agents drag them from their homes at gunpoint with the handcuffs tight
> around there wrists.

Dead wrong. All this will accomplish is the any malware author will just
be one hell of a lot more careful to avoid getting caught. It might even
accelerate another trend: malware by script kiddies who goes down,
malware by real criminals (who use/sell the infected machines as spam
relays, DDoS zombies (nice extortion tool, already used), ...) will go
up. Net result: you ruined the live of a few foolish kids and their
entire family, but you still don't get the (much more dangerous)
professional criminals. Achievement for network security: NIL.

> The consequences need to be severe enough.  In order to accomplish that
> our infrastructure has got to support the basic ability to find people
> who cause problems.  Anonymity is not an option.

Ever heard of identity theft? In the same way that the less stupid 
criminals don't use their own private cars but stolen ones for
committing crimes, criminal malware authors will just use
computers/accounts whose access credentials were stolen. You end up
investigating a fool who got his access credentials stolen, but probably
didn't do anything else. And you still have to find the real guy ...

We really should take a lesson from the real world here: valuable
property (like big bags full of money) are not usually left out on the
kitchen table and only protected by strong penalties for anyone
wandering in and grabbing a few - if you tried to rely on this, police and
insurance would laugh you out of town. Instead, valueable physical
property is protected by serious physical means of protection (like
putting your bags full of cash into a big, heavy, unmovable safe) _and_
legislation to punish the few serious criminals who still manage to
steal some.

The way to protect digital infrastructure from the destructive effects
of malware is to harden the infrastructure itself. Don't use insecure
operating systems and hope that the 'patch of the day' will keep the
malware out - because it won't. Don't use sloppily coded, insecure
software on hope nothing bad will happen because nobody will find out
how to exploit the flaws - because somebody will find out and exploits
will happen. Don't build insecure networks and hope nobody will abuse
them because nobody knows what a mess it is - because somebody will
abuse them.

In short: Don't build a house of cards and then try to outlaw the wind,
build a house of stone and enjoy the fresh air.

Yes, there are things that are very hard or practically impossible to
guard against (DoS comes to mind), but practically all malware problems
are due to avoidable failures: insecure configurations (like executing
untrusted code from unknown sources by default), coding errors that
could be avoided by using proper tools (like buffer overflows) and so
on. Close the existing easy attack paths and then we can deal with the
remaining few attackers with the law and a lot of attention.


Regards,
      Alex.
-- 
"Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and
 looks like work."                                      -- Thomas A. Edison

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