[67384] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: Dumb users spread viruses
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Roland Perry)
Mon Feb 9 11:09:36 2004
Date: Mon, 9 Feb 2004 16:07:35 +0000
To: nanog@merit.edu
From: Roland Perry <nanog@internetpolicyagency.com>
In-Reply-To: <4027A8DE.5030306@he.iki.fi>
Errors-To: owner-nanog-outgoing@merit.edu
In article <4027A8DE.5030306@he.iki.fi>, Petri Helenius <pete@he.iki.fi>
writes
> You get millions of people calling asking how to disable the annoying
>feature that they got when they updated the computer. In addition they
>will tell other people not to upgrade because it gets more annoying to
>use email and the earlier way was more convinient.
That's a user interface design issue. People seem happy enough with
popups from virus checkers saying "suchandsuch a file is infected - what
do you want to do about it", all I'm proposing is something similar for
"potentially harmful files".
You already get something similar for (eg) driver files not signed as
XP-compatible. Does that put people [support desks, users, potential
upgraders] off XP?
I agree there may be a scaling issue, although I see fewer
wanted-executables annually than I have non-XP drivers installed, which
is also pretty much an annual exercise.
Of course, if it did gain acceptance maybe the black hats would simply
deliver their infections differently.
--
Roland Perry
