SECURING THE WEB: Making the Internet a better (and safer) place to live means mapping many of the institutions of the real world--defense, taxation, government, law enforcement--over to cyberspace. Here are some of the things that must to happen to bring the Internet into line.
I am in the odd position today of actually rooting--at least a little--for the Code Red worm. As I write this, late Wednesday afternoon, I am also getting ready to shut down one of my servers, which I don't think is infected...but I don't want to take a chance. And by the time you read this, we should have some idea how much damage, if any, the worm did. Maybe this will be Y2K all over again.
If you're reading this column at the usual time you do such things, then the worm probably wasn't too bad, at least where you live. But if getting to the column has been an uphill slog (thanks for the effort!), then the worm has met with great success. I am hoping for the former, but since the latter is someday inevitable I'd just as soon get it over with.
I DON'T KNOW WHAT IT WILL TAKE for people to understand the seriousness of Internet threats, except for them to experience the downside themselves. Perhaps when a worm takes down the Net for a few hours people will get the hint that something needs to be done. Then the authors of these software bombs will stop being treated as cuddly, iconoclastic hackers and treated like the criminals and sociopaths they are.
If our homes were as much under siege as our computers are, we'd have troops in the streets and martial law. While the Internet hasn't come to that, I won't be surprised when it does. We can head that drastic an action off--but only if we're ready to make some changes.
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