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Miscellaneous

by Mike Masnick

Tue, Jan 14th 2003 9:32am





Should I Have The Right To Kill A Malicious Process On Your Machine?

from the the-debate-continues dept

Tim Mullen is pushing forward his argument that he (or anyone else, for that matter) should have the right to kill malicious processes on your machine. That is, if your computer is spitting out viruses, anyone should be able to force it to stop. He's raised this argument before, and he though security experts would be on his side (and everyone else wouldn't). However, he was surprised to find the opposite to be true. Security experts have routinely condemned his plan. He argues back against them, saying that since computer owners don't have to take responsibility of a malicious process running on their machine, there is no infringement for breaking into their machine to stop it. The problem I see is how do you define a "malicious" process? What if someone wants whatever process to be running on their machine? And, what if you do additional damage to their machine in your effort to stop the malicious process? This "solution" seems to raise plenty of other problems.

5 Comments | Leave a Comment..


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  1.  

    Vigilantes

    identicon
    Michael M, Jan 14th, 2003 @ 9:39am

    It's the online equivalent of vigilante justice. If you're making drugs or counterfeit money in your home, I don't have the right to break in and stop you. Law enforcement does.

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  2.  

    Uh, yeah..

    identicon
    Oliver Wendell Jones, Jan 14th, 2003 @ 10:25am

    Let's make this legal. Then the RIAA and MPAA can reach out and extinguish all the P2P programs running on your PC which they consider to be malicious...

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  3.  

    No Subject Given

    identicon
    Tony, Jan 14th, 2003 @ 5:43pm

    The problem I see is how do you define a "malicious" process? What if someone wants whatever process to be running on their machine? Examples of bad processes that are worth killing... (1) "Bulletproof" spam server. (2) Worm virus. (3) Evil renegade robots that: (a) chew bandwidth. (b) automate sniffing/scanning/exploiting.

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  4.  

    Re: Uh, yeah..

    identicon
    cam, Jan 14th, 2003 @ 5:57pm

    unfortunately, your seemingly facetious remark is all too real. a group of tech lobbyists and the RIAA folks actually made a secret proposal in the last few weeks that comes all too close (http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&ncid=528&e=2&cid=528&u=/ap/20030114/ap_on_hi_te/downloa ding_music). it looks as if congress is considering the idiotic notion, too.

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  5.  

    I consider Microsoft Software malicious...

    identicon
    thecaptain, Jan 15th, 2003 @ 5:50am

    So do I have the right to shut down 90% of internet users so I don't have to worry about Outlook viruses anymore?

    Ahhhhh what a dream.

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]


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