[CS-FSLUG] Let's Talk About It: Web of Trust

[Ed Hurst]

The list seems to be sleeping. I'll whisper a few more words into the 
silence and see what happens. *sshhhhh...*

We are getting a heavier-than-usual wave of spam bouncing of the list 
mail system. It started just before Christmas. On my blog, I'm getting a 
matching wave of comment spam. Early in my attempt at blogging, I made 
some effort to report the IPs of the offending sources. Then I began to 
understand botnets. At best, I was alerting ISPs to the ID of some bots 
on their space. There's been some debate in other places whether we 
ought to expend more energy on that, or attacking the problem at a 
different level by advocating FOSS OSes, which are more resistant to 
being turned into bots.

Recently, I saw that same point made from an unexpected source. Suzi 
Turner was blogging on ZDNet about the latest WMF vulnerability in 
Windows, and said right out she recommended replace Windows with Linux.

    http://blogs.zdnet.com/Spyware/?p=735

In the past (far as I know) she always emphasized protecting Windows 
itseslf. Lately there she offers a little more FOSS advocacy. Her cred 
is really knowing how Windows exploits work.

Back to the blog spamming, though: Would anyone want to venture an 
opinion on whether it's more useful to report/complain about the botnet 
IPs, the spamvertized domains, or some of both?



-- 
Ed Hurst
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Plain & Simple Computer Help - http://ed.asisaid.com/
Mission, Method & Means - http://ed.asisaid.com/blog/