Fighting the worms of mass destruction (Economist) [LWN.net]

Fighting the worms of mass destruction (Economist)

Posted Dec 1, 2003 17:32 UTC (Mon) by labkun (guest, #17361)
In reply to: Fighting the worms of mass destruction (Economist) by foo@share-foo.com
Parent article: Fighting the worms of mass destruction (Economist)

We do have international highway - it's internet ! Well, I'm not from Korea, but let me guess - You're American, right ? Are You sure that "insecure nods" are in Korea only ?
But You right with generalities of suggesting preventions of anonymity. It's impossible and it'll be the end of free will.
The next step is to burn some kind of ID to everybody's face !

Lets say, like a prevention of international terrorism ...

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Fighting the worms of mass destruction (Economist)

Posted Dec 1, 2003 21:19 UTC (Mon) by proski (guest, #104) [Link] (3 responses)

I believe you don't get it. What the first poster meant is that we don't have international highways for cars, so one cannot steal a car in a country where it's easy (for any reason) and then drive it to another country and use it as a crime tool without ever being stopped and asked for documents. But we do have such highways for data, and that's why the analogy with cars is flawed.

Highways in Europe are irrelevant because they connect countries with similar legal and economical systems.

Also, let's keep the nationality issue out of the discussion. I don't want my arguments to be judged by my place of origin. We all are individuals, and should treat each other as such.

Fighting the worms of mass destruction (Economist)

Posted Dec 1, 2003 22:17 UTC (Mon) by smoogen (subscriber, #97) [Link]

Sadly that is wrong. There have been several bank robberies in Mexico and the United States where the car was stolen from across the border. It has probably happened between the Canada and United States border too. All it takes is stealing the drivers license too.

Fighting the worms of mass destruction (Economist)

Posted Dec 4, 2003 11:44 UTC (Thu) by jonth (guest, #4008) [Link]

Rubbish. For years, Spain did not have an extradition treaty to the UK. In addition, it's possible to drive from Baghdad to London without ever leaving your vehicle. In summary, European legal systems are different, and the roads don't stop at the border of Europe.

Fighting the worms of mass destruction (Economist)

Posted Dec 4, 2003 18:16 UTC (Thu) by Cato (guest, #7643) [Link]

Quite a few countries in Europe belong to the Schengen grouping, meaning that you can quite legally drive from one country to another without any checks. And about 15 years ago, it was common to simply slow down a bit on the motorway between Brussels and Luxembourg when crossing the border, but you never actually stopped, let alone had any documents checked.

Fighting the worms of mass destruction (Economist)

Posted Dec 1, 2003 23:14 UTC (Mon) by foo@share-foo.com (guest, #7940) [Link]

The insecure nodes are everywhere, but if an american wants to attack another american they will first exploit someone in a country like Korea to obfuscate their identity and limit the ability to trace the damage back to them. This is very common. Part of the reason this works is due to political, legal, geographic, cultural and administrative boundries that make it nearly impossible trace attacks that a proxied through countries with which we have historically had many comunication problems with. This isn't happening because countries like Korea are bad, in fact, they are scape goats for our own evil doers. In fact, I would say that if I were a Korean who wanted to attack another Korean, I would first proxy off someone my government had communication problems with too. The idea being that all logs or info that may have existed to link me to evil deeds would long since have expired way before the two jurisdictions ever start communicating with eachother and sharing info. In fact, you can be pretty safe in assuming that in the rare event that Korean and the US law enforcement agencies cooperate, they will have much bigger fish to fry than the average hacker. What I was trying to point out is that this will still work even after the cracker ass politicians here in the states tatoo barcodes on everyones ass under the guise of protection from anonymity.