Comments on: What's the next security threat?

Gone are the days of simple worms and viruses. Now botnets and phishing dominate malicious software--and new twists are on the way.

[jimjv2005]

Verizon email blocking settlement.

To prevent email from being bounced, remove your Verizon pop 3 account, under MSN hotmail, under email options.

[jimjv2005]

Missing Internet Explorer beta?

Boy, people using Windows 98 must not really want IE 7 and Windows Vista to ship? Check the following url out: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/ie7/default.mspx

[ba_oren]

There is a solution for the next security threats

CallingID is the best solution against security threats. It puts you back in control. When you visits a site you see who is the owner, if it is a real company and you can be sure that main security problems like phishing, DNS spoofing or even a site that hides its owner identity will automatically be shown

[TV James]

ISPs are the problem and solution

Despite their desire to not get involved, ISPs are going to need to be the solution to the problem they've allowed to proliferate.

If I turn the water on in my apartment and leave it running for a month, eventually the apartment complex is going to shut off my water or at least have words with me, even though water is included in the monthly rent they charge me. (Or, they'll raise everyone's rent.)

Just wait until the day a major player like AOL automatically disconnects from Earthlink because its automated system detects too much spam coming from that network.

ISPs need to be more vigilant(sp?) about identifying and containing bots on its networks and about being less hesitant to shut down connections to neighboring networks who haven't done likewise.

[alucinor]

Computing Monoculture

Standard implementation of software -- a computing monoculture -- is what allows these security holes to be exploited easily enough for black hats to profit.

The solution is twofold: diverse implementations in the application and OS spaces, and open standards to allow interoperability.

Take the F/OSS computing landscape, for example. For OSes, you have Linux, the BSDs, and OpenSolaris. But they all share many of the same applications because of open source and open standards.

Diversity breeds strength in nature, and our artificial world we are creating in the form of the Internet and all its connected computers is no different. We need a multitude of architectures and operating systems so that malware infections cannot spread so quickly and easily through networks.

The huge number of Linux distros helps make the Linux world more secure in a macrocosmic sense.