Mysterious Net traffic Spurs Code Hunt

CNET ^ | 20 June 2003 | Robert Lemos

[CJ Wolf]

sorry but technically, this smells like morons with new tools that don't know what they are doing.

[FastCoyote]

I think this stuff is hitting my commercial installation. And it has been clogging the system.

[nhoward14]

These strange packets must be Neo running around the Matrix.

[glock rocks]

it's orrin !!

[Atchafalaya]

Jimmy Hoffa!

[supercat]

I suspect in time, someone with a disassembler will be able to figure out what this code is up to.

Imagine, though, that we were all using Palladium machines. Where would we be then?

[this_ol_patriot]

Hacker Found!!

Helen the Hacked.
An ugly development...origin unknown

[Rocky]

Helen the Hacked.

LOL. But I would point out that they are looking for a hacker, not a hack.

[Ciexyz]

Verrrry inneresting.

[BiffWondercat]

"When the Borg come, they'll come in force. They don't do anything piecemeal"

Maybe a "outsourced IT worker"?

[aruanan]

Mysterious Net traffic Spurs Code Hunt

Maybe the net has gotten complex enough that it is able to support a neural net consciousness and what they're detecting is its thoughts.

[SpaceBar]

It's probably a stealth searchbot from a communist country's military intelligence apparatus, looking for vulnerabilities and sensitive information of any kind. Such information could be used for a wide range of criminal or terrorist activities.

[Chancellor Palpatine]

Skynet.....

[ChefKeith]

It must be the "greys" getting revenge for Roswell.

or maybe it is the "father of the internet" (gore)

[FairOpinion]

Ping -- seems to be an update to the earlier thread about the "mysterious trojan horse" article posted in the thread at:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/930838/posts?q=1&&page=51

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

We should have this on the Tech_index list then!

OFFICIAL BUMP(TOPIC)LIST

[adam_az]

It's probably a stealth searchbot from a communist country's military intelligence apparatus, looking for vulnerabilities and sensitive information of any kind. Such information could be used for a wide range of criminal or terrorist activities.

I think your tinfoil hat is a little tight this morning.

[happygrl]

AS code is binary, not uni, it finally happened. A "1" mated with a "0" and produced a packet.

It's running around the internet trying to find its mommy.

[SpaceBar]

I said:
It's probably a stealth searchbot from a communist country's military intelligence apparatus, looking for vulnerabilities and sensitive information of any kind. Such information could be used for a wide range of criminal or terrorist activities.

Then you said:
I think your tinfoil hat is a little tight this morning.


And now I reply:

Well, you might think my scenario is outlandish, and the stuff of conspiricy theories, but this link (washington post) is about a graduate student who, using standard network query tools, mapped a large amount of corporate lan/wan and larger structures on the internet to the degree where US authorities want his thesis kept under wraps since it could be used by terrorists. So? Is my hypothesis really that outlandish? Don't answer, because the answer is evidently "no", and other people in high places seem to think so as well. I don't doubt for a microsecond that all sorts of nefarious groups including criminals, terrorists, and military agencies of foriegn governments are examining every nook and cranny of the net to understand its underlying structure and possible vulnerabilities. So instead of reaching for the increasingly tired tin-foil hat saw, and attempting to discredit the messenger, you might try thinking outside the box instead.