[plug] MyDoom virus/worm

[James Devenish]

In message <Law15-DAV22upHBFfhg0002aced at hotmail.com>
on Thu, Jan 29, 2004 at 08:30:29AM +0800, senectus wrote:
> Yupp.
> 
> I was glad to see the story on www.slashdot.org this morning

I don't think that Slashdot's audience is the audience about which Paul
is concerned! ;-)

> -----Original Message-----
> From: plug-admin at plug.linux.org.au [mailto:plug-admin at plug.linux.org.au] On
> Behalf Of Paul Arch
> Sent: Thursday, 29 January 2004 8:01 AM
> To: plug at plug.linux.org.au
> Subject: [plug] MyDoom virus/worm
> 
>  We all have heard about it recently, but I was reading an article in the
> age :
> http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/01/28/1075088091365.html?from=top5
>  
>  What concerns me, not only in this article but on other various media
> reports, is the somewhat 'association' with this worm and the 'dispute'
> between the Linux community and SCO Group, the apparent target of a DOS
> attack.  I don't think I am paranoid about this, but to me the wording of
> such articles could lead a reader to make the assumption that the virus was
> designed specifically by the linux community to attack SCO.
>  
>  Do others on the list get the same vibe ? 

The article uses language such as "suggest" and "others suggest". Since
it is not possible for the author to know for certain that the worm did
not "originate from within the Linux community" (whatever that means),
the approach seems fair to me. It could be suggested that the article
should have indicated that there is "no evidence", but this is the same
problem that faces non-tech news articles. I think a lot of people would
feel that journalists have misrepresented them, or failed to include
enough balanced information, and this is a general issue with news
services. So, I doubt the quoted article is "picking" on Linux or
misrepresenting the situation any more than any news article on any
topic. However, I do think that the article misrepresents spam as an
'epidemic' instead of a 'pandemic' :-)