Given a CD by a stranger what would you do?
Discussion
http://software.silicon.com/security/
Apparently lots of city types would put it in their CD drive at work after being told it was a Valentines day promotion. If this had been a criminal or terrorist organization doing this a hell of a lot of damage could have been done.
Apparently lots of city types would put it in their CD drive at work after being told it was a Valentines day promotion. If this had been a criminal or terrorist organization doing this a hell of a lot of damage could have been done.
Good words POD,i met a complete stranger today after i sold him some garage equipment and took it down to his place near the south coast today,he even offered to buy me lunch although i had to decline ,Great bloke!...now wether ide trust him or not is another thing
I got given a CD by a young bloke a few months back,he was a singer and was selling himself,when i dropped him off he said wait here then ran in doors to give me this for keeps..another decent chappy. ive not even listened to it yet
I got given a CD by a young bloke a few months back,he was a singer and was selling himself,when i dropped him off he said wait here then ran in doors to give me this for keeps..another decent chappy. ive not even listened to it yet
ZR1cliff said:
Good words POD,i met a complete stranger today after i sold him some garage equipment and took it down to his place near the south coast today,he even offered to buy me lunch although i had to decline ,Great bloke!...now wether ide trust him or not is another thing
I got given a CD by a young bloke a few months back,he was a singer and was selling himself,when i dropped him off he said wait here then ran in doors to give me this for keeps..another decent chappy. ive not even listened to it yet
Well he has a good, trustworthy name at least
Picked up some enebriated old codger who was stumbling away from the Upton upon Severn Jazz Festival a few years ago offering his thumb to the passing cars. Turned out his wife had given him an ultimatum at lunchtime "Stop drinking, or I'm leaving". Bravely he chose to drink, which, although it is clearly the right thing to do from a moral perspective when the wife lays it on the line like that, it might nonetheless be considered foolish in the cold light of day since he lived a good 10 miles from Upton and was carrying a guitar case and was having difficulty enough stumbling, let alone stepping out. When I eventually decanted him onto his doorstep his gratitude was as profuse as it was slurred, and he pressed a recording of his own music on CD into my hands. Turns out he is a pretty accomplished blues musician who used to play with a group that became the Yardbirds, played with Howling Wolf, and once recruited a young Robert Plant to sing and play the washboard in his band. I remain very grateful to him for not chundering all over the car.
steveherb said:
You dont sing on the side do you
Why did I read that as 'you dont SWING on the side do you'? Must've been the title of the CD that did it.
I'll get my coat......
I did enquire about the CD title and he assured me it was the style of his singing....thank God.
Back to the original story, I'm not sure what they think this stunt actually shows. Al Quaeda are hardly likely to hire lots of scrubbed-up people to hang around tube stations handing out pony CDs. If the impression was being given that this stuff was a promo, it is perfectly reasonable to believe it is not a high risk. No promo firm is going to blow up their target audience's PCs intentionally. Comparing it to what happened at Sumitomo is just plain silly. What these users did was at worst a little risky. It was certainly not grossly irresponsible. It was also entirely predictable, so rather than trying to order the tide to go out, you'd be better off putting safeguards in place that allow users to survive taking minor risks. Without exception every major viral outbreak I've witnessed in a bank would have been prevented if patches had been installed and AV databases had been kept up to date by the IT dept. Most companies' IT security policies are a badly thought out wish list which no amount of training or disciplinary action will ever indoctrinate into the users. The onus has to fall back on the people who maintain the integrity (hahahaha) of the Windows platform, the firewalls and the AV software.
Parrot of Doom said:
Frankly I'd rather live in a world where we trust strangers, than one where we're suspicious of everybody and everything.
Agree with that as well. Lets face it, we all open up JUNK mail, thinking nothing of the fact it may be a letter bomb, and dont most PC's have software anyway to pick up these type of things.
A totally pointless exercise me thinks.
And dont we all pick up the pinta outside our doorsteps in the morning, placed there by a total stranger, (never ever seen my milkman), and put it in our morning cup of tea, for gods sake may be spliced with cyanide or worse!
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