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Lots more FUD creating... aren`t most of those electrical and power distribution systems SCADA systems at heart? Which use (sometimes) a windows front end, but lots of times use some kind of propietary interface, so all those peksy viruses won`t affect them???
Personally I believe it is not the duty of the US Government, or any other Government to try to somehow police the net, nor to presume that even has a right to. If crimes are being commited in your jurisidiction then sure, take care of that, but to try and some how impose rules and regulations on something that by its very nature is not designed to be ruled and governed sets a rather worrying trend.
Ideally we need to come up with new ways to improve security, do what we can to prevent hacking attacks and viruses etc... the problem is that all we really do at present is put lots of band aids out there, you might catch a virus - here is some antivirus software, might get a web server hacked - here is a firewall etc... we seem to be trapped in this eternal reactive state of being reactive. How about someone actually comes up with a new idea on how to deal with the problem, the current situation really is that for the most part what we have doesn`t hold up too well to all the threats up there, so a new approach is needed (IMHO).
Development of the new academic network continues, so how about development of a new personal OS? yes changing what we have now requires a huge amount of effort, but otherwise this is going to go on and on forever and imposing lots of rules and regulations doesn`t really do much, lets fix the root of the problem for a change.
So, with that in mind I will be launching a new operating system in the new year, along with a super duper way to secure what we have, more on that later.....
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Tiger, you make some excellent points. First and foremost:
1) Defining what exactly an "attacker" is
2) Intention is key (how does the government plan on establishing the intent of the "attacker"?)
I'm assuming they're not going to bother differentiating between owned people and crackers. Just throw it all in one big soup bowl and deal with it accordingly.
On that note:
I really don't know who is worse anymore - the cracker or the person who doesn't care about securing their pc that gets owned. Should they both be punished in the same manner? Now, this is obviously unrealistic but, my guess is that if every typical user (non-cracker) on the planet earth understood and actually applied some basic principles for securing their pc (AV's, firewalls, comprehension of what spyware/trojans/viruses are and do), this internet security "dilemma" wouldn't exist even remotely in proportion as it does by today's standards. Now, as much as a stretch as that is, it does bring one important question to the table. Who should be held more accountable for recent rises in "attacks", the ignorant end-user or the cracker?
