last to leave

my only gripe for today: me being one of the last to leave the lab lesson i had in the morning. the 2 hour lesson had me going into overtime for at least 10-20minutes. i could choose to leave at 1130, though that would mean i'd be awarded 0.6 marks out of the full 1 mark. so i decided to stay and get my full mark. i wasn't able to complete all the tasks even then. the tutor was nice enough to let me pass because i did 2 of the 3 tasks. it's rather saddenning that i can't complete the lab tasks. and this is already the second one i failed to complete!

in the meantime, check out this security site in singapore.

just this afternoon, i was under attack. in irc that is. this person instructed his botnet to send me private messages, ping me, and send me notices. and they also mass-joined a channel i hang around in. after getting excess flood twice, i wised up and placed a blanket ignore mask. and then i activated a script that limited the people joining the channel at any one time. botnets are scary in a way. it allows their owner to abuse the networks, either for fun or profit. the zombie computers can be called upon to send tons of spam, or even declare a Distributed Denial of Service on a particular host on the Internet. an organisation similar to the security.org.sg, honeynet.org attempts to observe the behaviours of these malicious users. i'm not sure why but i find their work rather amazing. what these people do is basically set up a simulated environment which attracts attackers to connect to their system and do their dirty stuff, without realising they are being monitored.

it's probably not a good thing, but here's a what-if i wish to materialise. what if, somebody was able to hack the hackers. and then this person can subsequently take over the zombie computers aka the mass of botnet PCs. next, release a virus to this botnet which will attempt to propagate the virus. what can the virus do? good things of course! what if this virus essentially scans a system for backdoors left open by hackers. then it attempts to patch the system (HAHAHA but it's a thought isn't it?) and if it fails to do so, it crashes the system, formats the system files(not the user files), or something to that effect. and while doing so, the virus can also leave a note for the owner of the system stating that the system is infected (well duh if the system crashed the owner better take notice!) and it should be patched and fixed asap.

well hey it's a what-if afterall. given that the first what-if happens it would be much more effective since the control of the systems would then be rendered useless because the password had been changed. and the hackers won't have access to those zombies. the virus would probably be rather destructive in a sense, so it might not be safe to be released at all. but hey, at least it'll force people to stand up and take notice.

oh dear i'm ranting as usual...

*why of course! the one and only!*