Dirty E-Politics: When will virus writers get righteous?
Okay, so, spam, spoofs, phishing? Bboring. So you make a few bucks, maybe get caught. Whoopee. Trojans and worms that sucker the suckerable into doing things no one should do, for no one's benefit in particular except the cheap thrills of the virus writer? Yawn. Old news; been happening since '93. But send an email that looks like it's from the ACLU, that announces a time-critical action needed (thereby baits the faithful into clicking immediately because it isn't about their credit card info or some Nigerian attorney) and asks folks to click an embedded link that launches a nasty *.exe or *.bat file, THEN you're really accomplishing something new, and messy. Targeted viral mail that selectively wipes out Democratic harddrives, or that critically impairs the PCs of Republican activists? The day before an election, or the day before the other "side" has something *real* that will happen or be deployed or be announced? An email they might even forward madly before investigating thoroughly? Or something that includes an address book worm so that one activist easily infects tons of others, in a snowball process, instead of these dumb "I just grabbed a few random sentences from some random file on your computer, that don’t make sense on their own and out of context" worm messages? How has this not happened yet - or has it, and I've missed it? -eg
participants (1)
-
Ellis Godard