Sunday, October 28, 2007
Attack on Estonia!
Recently I was reading in Wired magazine about a digital attack on Estonia that basically brought the country’s internet to a halt. Literally thousands of computers from several parts of the world were sending garbage requests to servers in Estonia and overloading them. This continued for the better portion of a day until the ISP’s in Estonia blocked all requests to their servers from outside their country. This solved the problem temporarily, but it also cut Estonia off from the rest of the world.
What caused this to happen? In part the computer in your home if you have a Windows machine. It was determined that thousands of the computers sending the attack were in the USA. These computers were infected with a virus or spyware/malware that made the computers into “zombies” at the beck and call of their controllers. In this case the controllers were apparently in Russia. People in Russia were controlling your Windows computer from afar and using it to attack servers in Estonia. Macintosh computers are immune to these types of malware so all the attacking computers were infected “zombie” Windows PC’s.
This leads me to observe that something interesting has happened here that Wired magazine did not pick up on. It was only Microsoft Windows machines that participated in this attack. Not Macintosh, Linux, or any other operating system-just Windows! Windows computers are vulnerable to something like 300,000 different versions of malware. Some of this malware sits in your computer at home right now. It sits there waiting for the signal from someone from across the world to activate a program that lets them use your computer for their purposes.
If you have a Windows machine your computer has some type of malware on it. They all do. You don’t see it running in the background silently waiting for someone to activate it to do their bidding. The interesting thing is that a lot of companies will put malware in your computer without your knowledge. A good example of this is the secret rootkits that Sony installed on Windows machines when customers put Sony music CD’s into their machines to play them. This happened automatically when the CD was played on the computer. You had no choice in the matter-Sony conned you because you owned a computer that runs Windows! As long as you own a Windows computer you will have complicity in crimes that you had no knowledge of.
How do we solve this problem? Part of the solution is get a new computer that does not run Windows. Macintosh and Linux are two that are immune to Windows malware. Linux will install on your current Windows computer and run very well. Probably better than your Windows machine ever did! It runs a lot like Windows and very rarely crashes. It is also completely immune to Windows Malware! Linux is also free of cost and free of software keys. Software keys are those ridiculously long letter-number combinations that you have to enter to get a Windows program to run.
Another solution is to invest in an Apple Macintosh computer. Every Mac is made of quality parts, made to last a long time. Yes they cost a little bit more to own in the beginning, but you will rarely have to spend more on a Mac. They just run and run well. They are completely immune to Windows malware and they last 2-3 times longer than a Windows machine. During that time they will run well and be easy to use. A Mac has a user interface that is beautiful to look at and looks much better than the Windows Vista interface. When you connect something to a Mac it just runs-no drivers and CD installers to deal with to get it running. It just runs!
So the next time you sit in front of your Windows computer think a little. Do you support crime on the Internet? Or do you support something better and safer? The choice is yours! Leave comments for me!
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