A teacher could get 40 years for Malware (which IMHO is nothing more than a variation of “Virus”). That sounds like a harsh sentence.
Even more reason to scan your computer regularly, and keep anti-virus and anti-spyware definitions up to date, but 40 years? Yikes.
For anyone interested, Sunbelt’s Blog is fantastic, and I’ve blogged about it a few times. It has a great approach to explaining and demonstrating IT security in an easy to read, non-pushy manner. Not many places you will see that. Most focus on general tech, and don’t touch security. Security is a fascinating field.
During a quick email exchange with Sunbelt’s Alex Eckelberry he pointed me to this comment which gives a little more info. Expect more from Sunbelt’s Blog tomorrow on this.
Blogging in IT and software development in general is really quite impressive. Only a few years ago the concept of transparency and open communication on this scale was virtually non-existent. Now Alex blogged, commented about Preston Gralla’s poor research behind his post and got a reply. I then emailed Alex about an unrelated topic (choosing passwords in the WeeklyTechTips post), happened to mentioned this topic, and he pointed me to a comment of his on Preston Gralla’s blog.
I have a book on my shelf “How The Internet Works” (Fourth Edition), which I got for a school project back in High School (great book by the way). Would I have imagined the above chain of events when I got that book? Not in a million years. A few years ago this would have been a small article on a tech news site, and nothing more. Two people whose writing I read, going back and forth, and having a chance to contact one of them and get a reply a minute later is really remarkable by those standards. By today’s standards it’s somewhat more normal (though still appreciated).
The blogging phenomenon definitely made IT more transparent. I become more convinced of this on a daily basis.
By the way it looks like Mr. Gralla’s now up to “How The Internet Works Eighth Edition“. I guess I wasn’t the only one who thought it was a cool book.