Thousands face Internet loss as FBI shuts off servers | Hacker News Reader

Thousands face Internet loss as FBI shuts off servers

bbc.co.uk

21 pointsColinWright24 comments

The comments @ http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/what-the-i... are hilarious, in a depressing way. Here's my favorite: "Personally, I like the idea of firing my internet service provider for not protecting me from such viruses and other malarkey. They are the ones transferring the viruses. They should be sued. And, after doing that it would be good exercise and fun to take a sledge hammer to all of my computer parts."

Who doesn't want their ISP filtering everything they browse?

The comments on these kind of articles, on sites like the BBC's, are always a hilarious mix of misinformation, outrage and usually blame shifting away from personal responsibility. Well, it's hilarious until you come to the realisation that these may be the so called "regular" people and this may actually be how the majority thinks (not a whole lot, it turns out).

As opposed to comments on US news websites, which usually alternate liberal conspiracy theorizing with conservative conspiracy theorizing, the actual article only having the slightest relevance to the keyword-triggered axe-grinding that immediately commences.

It makes me wonder why news sites even allow comments. Remember the pre-social web? It worked just fine.

I'm sure it comes down to page views, like everything else on the web.

This is what gets me down more than anything. Some days it feels like we're on this downward spiral toward utter dissolution of personal responsibility and power. People don't realize that when you abdicate individual responsibility you also give up power. When the buck stops with you you have control, when the buck stops with your ISP, they have control. This applies to the workplace and government as well.

I think your sarcasm detector needs recalibrating - there is no way that comment was not tongue in cheek.

There's some internet law that points out that you can never know for sure.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe%27s_law

I almost said Poe's law! But I thought that might be the sex one (e.g. rule 34).

Maybe not all ISPs should do it, but don't think there isn't a HUGE market for filtered, safe internet access. Not everyone wants to trade feeling safe browsing without oversight for feeling safe browsing without viruses.

Well I'm glad my water supplier filters that, and I'm glad my electricity provider filters out spikes. While I personally don't want my ISP anywhere near my ip packets, the average person just wants to pay for Internet from an ISP and feel like the ISP is in some way providing more that just data. As the Internet evolves into a utility like water and electricity, more regulation, oversight and consumer protections are inevitable.

I still don't understand why this is such a big deal. So 300k users drop off the net until they fix their DNS settings, either by manually editing, or calling their support provider to complain, or taking their computer in for service, or buying a new computer (which is a fairly common way to fix serious computer problems).

It should be immediately apparent to the users that something is wrong, even if they have no idea how to fix it. It's a really easy fix as soon as the first competent person looks at it. I'm going to save my concern for attacks on infrastructure, or attacks which covertly compromise systems in ways which aren't readily apparent to the users.

>I still don't understand why this is such a big deal.

It's at least a dozen free and very zeitgeisty/SEOable column inches over the course of a few days. It has basically everything (except perhaps sex) that an editor is looking for in a story.

ISPs aren't known for stellar customer service. It could lead to a very long wait without internet access for some people, even if each call only takes 10-20 minutes.

> It's a really easy fix as soon as the first competent person looks at it.

Most users just aren't technically competent in this sense.

So this is a profitable event for geek squad. Malware costs consumers billions of dollars a year. This is nothing more than a line entry in that list. There's no good reason for it to get this much media coverage.

I guess the real question is how much has it cost me (as a taxpayer) per user to maintain these systems and "get the word out" so that the 300K users can be prevented from having to deal with the reality of the Internet being a harsh mistress.

I agree with removing infected machines from the normal Internet, but I'd put them on a separate network where they can only see instructions on how to fix their problem.

Exactly. Route all DNS queries to your page saying "You've been infected by malware, which we fixed, but now you have to change your DNS pointers or have somebody else fix them".

If I can think of that in two seconds, why can't the FBI?

This was brought up a while ago, and the reason it was shot down was that no one wants to condition users into taking advice from random web pages. Think of all the 'you've been infected! download anti-virus 2012 pro!' pop-ups that infest the net.

My proposal:

1. Use SSL ("check for the padlock")

2. Use a well-known URL (www.fbi.gov)

3. Don't provide any downloads, or anything to click, just ask the user to contact their ISP.

Send them to a secure page on google.com with instructions on changing their dns servers to 8.8.8.8. Everyone trusts Google, right? ;)

That's insane. They're already freaking conditioned. Talk to my dad sometime.

This is a much better explanation of what happened and why the federal government (FBI + courts) decided to take these actions. http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2011/11/how-the-most-mass...

This might be the only way to reach all of the infected. Up till now they were passive, now they are forced to take action - even if it's just complaining to their ISP. I don't want to know, what other kind of malware is working on those 300 000 systems.

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