Virus-infected computers should be blocked from the Internet and kept in quarantine until they are given a “health certificate,” a top Microsoft security researcher has suggested.
Under the proposed security regime, put forward on Thursday by the technology giant’s computing team, an individual’s Internet connection would be “throttled” to prevent the virus spreading to other computers. However, security experts warned that cutting people off from the Internet could be a drastic step too far and that the question of who would issue and verify the “health certificate” was troubling.
Millions of computers around the world running versions of Microsoft’s Windows operating system are infected by viruses without their user’s knowledge and used to generate billions of spam e-mails and attacks against Web sites.
The new proposal, Microsoft claimed, is built on the lessons of public health. Scott Charney, corporate vice president of Microsoft’s computing team, wrote on the company’s blog: “Just as when an individual who is not vaccinated puts others’ health at risk, computers that are not protected or have been compromised with a bot put others at risk and pose a greater threat to society.”
However, Ram Herkanaidu, a global researcher at computer security firm Kaspersky Lab, said cutting people off from the Internet was a wrongheaded solution.
“This would be a bad idea in practice. Just say your machine was infected — if you could not access the Internet, how would you be able to update your anti-virus and also apply any software patches required? Technically, though, an ISP could give limited access to a safe area so that they could get the relevant updates, but this would be done by individual ISPs themselves.”
Charney said: “In the physical world, international, national and local health organizations identify, track and control the spread of disease which can include, where necessary, quarantining people to avoid the infection of others. Simply put, we need to improve and maintain the health of consumer devices connected to the Internet in order to avoid greater societal risk.”
US and European ISPs have periodically considered blocking virus-infected machines from Internet access and diverting users to cleanup pages. However, they have shied away from it on the basis that it would be costly, while bringing them little direct benefit, as most infected machines would be on other networks.
Presenting his suggestion to the International Security Solutions Europe conference in Berlin, Charney said computers should be required to have a clean “health certificate” before being allowed to connect to the Internet. If a fix is available, the computer would be prompted to download a solution or to update its anti-virus settings.
He conceded that abolishing an individual’s Internet connection “could well have damaging consequences,” proposing that machines have an emergency function whereby users could perform certain activities much like mobile phones and the emergency services safeguard.
Herkanaidu said that there were flaws in the approach.
“Stopping an infected machine from accessing the Internet so that it cannot be used for malicious purposes like sending out spam on the face of it seems sensible,” he said.
“However, it does raise a lot of important questions like: Who would issue the proposed health certificates? What would be the criteria? How often should it be updated? But, more importantly, would it work? At Kaspersky we see over 30,000 new pieces of malware every day — it’s difficult to see how we could have a general scheme that would be able to cope with this,” he said.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day