Computer joyrides

My grandfather owned a junkyard, so as a kid I was fortunate enough to drive a variety of cars (at least when they functioned): Model Ts, Edsels, suicide-door Lincolns, and hot rod Mustangs. One thing that amazed me about the early automobiles was that many had a footswitch on the floor that started the car. It was a vast improvement over the old crankshaft method, let me assure you.

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I was stunned that anyone could get behind the wheel, press the footswitch, and take off down the road. No wonder bank robber Clyde Barrow had such an easy time stealing cars, even purportedly writing Henry Ford a fan letter at one point. 

I thought about that fact when I read about the sentencing of Jeffrey Lee Parson, whose variant of the Blaster worm crippled an estimated 48,000 computers in 2003 and drove Microsoft crazy with a DoS attack. He received, by many accounts, a light sentence: 18 months of a maximum 37 months. However, the amount of cash he has to pony up to the companies -- such as Microsoft -- and individuals harmed by his worm has yet to be decided.

Apparently, Parson has some mental problems, which led the judge to be more lenient. He also made a video for the Seattle school district that warned teens about the dangers of Internet vandalism, which is the high-tech equivalent of a murderer finding religion. 

The reason I thought of the old cars and their footswitches is that, to some extent, the Internet reminds me of them: It is pretty easy to get in and take anyone's computer for a spin.

The Clyde Barrows of the world deserve some type of severe punishment, to be sure, but to me Parson is more like a kid who just wants to take a ride and ends up running over Farmer Brown's cow. Either way, it is time someone invents something as easy to use and as universal as a car key for computers. That's easier said than done, obviously.

Until then, how can you keep your computer from having that footswitch? A few good suggestions would be to have a solid, up-to-date anti-virus product and to make sure your computer firewall is installed and active. And if you've heard it once, you've heard it a thousand times: Don't open e-mail attachments unless you know who the sender is and what the attachment is for. For example, JPG and GIF image files are often fine, but attachments with .scr, .exe, .zip, and .bat extensions should be suspect. 

Another comment on the Parson case: To read the headlines, you would think Parson originated the Blaster worm. A few samples from Google: "Blaster teen gets prison time," "Teen sentenced for releasing Blaster worm," and "Blaster worm creator Parson sentenced."

Not so fast, headline writers of the world. The author of the original Blaster code (which Parson modified for his own purposes) remains at large, with a bounty placed on his or her head by Microsoft. Happy hunting.