Vint Cerf on Net Security, Hacking, and Acting

ancientribe writes "Father of the Internet Vint Cerf talks candidly in an article on Dark Reading about his being a Googler, and the biggest problems with Internet security and what he sees as the most promising solutions. He says that he's only done a little casual hacking, and that the term 'hacker' no longer comes with the honor it once did. Cerf also reveals in this personal look at the Internet icon that his real dream was to be an actor."

Re:Music

[ch-chuck]

That is good advice [miqel.com] indeed.

educate yourself

[dedazo]

I'm sure it's a huge disappointment to you that "M$" was not mentioned by name - that's probably because Cerf knows the problem can hardly be blamed on Microsoft, and there are a lot of *nix boxes out there that are also part of "big iron" botnets. You might want to look through this [nanog.org]. Or Google a bit, if you're interested. You'll find lots of studies by people generally smarter than yourself that do not exonerate "M$" but don't stick them exclusively with the blame either, because it would be disingenuous to do so. I find that even people on Slashdot [slashdot.org] tend to be a bit more intelligent than to just blame everything on "M$" and be on their merry way.

People like yourself that live in Linux la-la land where everything is Microsoft's fault are going to be the most problematic when/if desktop Linux actually gains any traction among home users. The same group of people who can't be bothered to buy a $25 NAT router and keep their machines patched. What, do you figure botnets just take machines over by osmosis?

Of course it would be ridiculous to claim that Windows is not part of the problem here, but the problem is not as simplistic as you like to portray it.