Here’s how you’ll know when Microsoft gets serious about Conficker and its successors
Last Updated on Sunday, 23 August 2009 09:32 Written by alexklimburg Sunday, 23 August 2009 09:32
Tomorrow is the first day of GreyLogic’s subscription service IntelFusion: FLASH Traffic. One of the featured topics is a warning on what will happen as broadband becomes ubiquitous on a continent (Africa) that has an estimated 80% infection rate on its 100 million computers, almost all of which run Windows.
If Microsoft was really serious about defeating Conficker and other mega-botnets that will be emerging (with one million or more hosts), here’s what they would do:
- Either increase the bounty to a figure that represents real money or drop it altogether. $250,000 is nothing more than the monthly earnings of a decent carder. Instead, lay off one Senior VP and raise the bounty to the equivalent of his annual salary and stock award. That’s a solid 7 figure sum that will be a better use of the money than where it’s currently being spent.
- Provide free security updates to all Windows machines, pirated or not. Africa is in the middle of a computer virus pandemic because no one there can afford the cost of an AV subscription. If this were a biological virus on an equivalent scale, it would be comparable to the worst plague ever recorded, and labs would be pumping out free vaccines around the clock to fight it.
- If you don’t get serious about this, don’t be surprised when governments start dumping Windows enmasse for Linux. Its not only a viable option, it might even be the best option.
