DDOS attacks against Estonian Government websites
I originally spotted this article thanks to Harry Waldron's blog, and what I read there saddens me.
Many of us have known for a while that the primary reason the bad guys infect our computers has changed from "I've got the biggest schwang because I infected the most PCs" script kiddy bragging to financially and criminally motivated goals. The bad guys want to 0wn our computers so that they can use our broadband connections to distribute spam, so that our computers can be used as involuntary hosts of warez and other crud, and to harness our computers to be used as zombies in attacks against various Web sites.
I know that computer owners do not realise their lovely new machines may be used to score points in a political war on distant shores, but that is the reality of the Internet world - and I hate it. What happened to the brave visions for "the Internet" back when it was a babe? What happened to the visions of the global good - the ease of communication, the spreading knowledge, and education - empowering users, teaching them and strengthening them?
I've heard some analysts suggest that up to 98% of all spam is being sent via infected computers, and the bad guys don't care if those computers are owned by business, or grandma and grandad in the local retirement home. You can be a passifist, you can be anti-war, you can be pro-peace, you can be on the other side of the world and completely unaware of what is going on in distant countries you never think of and will never visit, but your computer may still be used in somebody else's "war".
I wish for the "good old days" when malware did no more than add a toolbar to IE, change your Search Engine and home page, and throw up pop-up windows advertising stuff you wouldn't buy anyway.
Unrest in Estonia:
http://www.f-secure.com/weblog/archives/archive-042007.html#00001181
Update on the Estonian DDoS attacks:
http://www.f-secure.com/weblog/archives/archive-042007.html#00001183