Open up – police!

I’m just back from a business trip to the Baltics. And I heard an interesting story there.

In one of the Baltic states, a well known local IT specialist ran into some trouble with the police. He’s got ADSL at home, shared with a neighbour – there’s one line for two apartments, or two houses. Early in the morning this man and his neighbour were woken by the police, and all their computers were arrested. Why? The neighbour’s computer was infected by a Trojan, and this Trojan conducted a DoS attack on a web site. So the company that owns the site makes a statement to the police. The police investigate, find the computer conducting the attack. And then decide to act by appearing at seven in the morning and taking not only the infected computer but the neighbour’s computer as well…

So we can see that Trojans and viruses are now doing damage in a new way. Maybe users will be investigated by the police, and have their computers arrested…

Here’s a list of all the known ways that a computer virus can cause damage – for personal and business users:

1. Computers and networks start to function in unstable way
2. Data is destroyed
3. Confidential information is stolen
4. Volume of traffic increases
5. Computers are seized in police investigations