[142977] in cryptography@c2.net mail archive
Re: Bitcoin v0.1 released
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (dan@geer.org)
Sun Jan 25 11:33:43 2009
From: dan@geer.org
To: Bill Frantz <frantz@pwpconsult.com>
cc: cryptography@metzdowd.com
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Sat, 24 Jan 2009 15:22:21 PST."
<r02010500-1049-D9F7CC98EA6D11DDB8380030658F0F64@[192.168.1.5]>
Date: Sat, 24 Jan 2009 23:07:17 -0500
Bill Frantz writes:
-+-----------------
| Some people tell me that the 0wned machines are among the most
| secure on the network because botnet operators work hard to
| keep others from compromising "their" machines. I could see the
| operators moving toward being legitimate security firms,
| protecting computers against compromise in exchange for some of
| the proof of work (POW) money.
I'm one of those people. Quoting from my speech of 1/20:
> Virus attacks have, of course, become rarer over time, which is
> to say that where infectious agents once ruled, today it is
> parasites. Parasites have no reason to kill their hosts -- on
> the contrary they want their hosts to survive well enough to
> feed the parasite. A parasite will generally not care to be all
> that visible, either. The difference between parasitism and
> symbiosis can be a close call in some settings, and of the folks
> who famously bragged of being able to take the Internet down in
> twenty minutes, one has said that a computer may be better
> managed once it is in a botnet than before since the bot-master
> will be serious about closing the machine up tight against
> further penetration and similarly serious about patch
> management. Therefore, since one can then say that both the
> machine's nominal owner and the bot master are mutually helped,
> what we see is evolution from parasite to symbiont in action.
> According to Margulis and Sagan, "Life did not take over the
> globe by combat, but by networking." On this basis and others,
> bot-nets are a life form.
Rest of text upon request. Incidentally, I *highly* recommend
Daniel Suarez's _Daemon_; trust me as to its relevance. Try
this for a non-fiction taste:
http://fora.tv/2008/08/08/Daniel_Suarez_Daemon_Bot-Mediated_Reality
--dan
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