Botnets- why they are likely about more than mere Spam or selling DoS

Do consider *WHY* folks would build huge Spam+DoS tools. Social warfare for one- Being able to censor social views like why Linux and Open Source or Creative Commons make sense gets easier if you can silence evangelists. Spamming with FUD is a carry on of the same.. But, there's more.. obsolete gear and software is not obsolete if it works. If it's rendered useless by Spam/DoS there's a monetary incentive for companies to fund sales driving botnets.

Even besides mere Currency, the motive of killing freedom is not lightly handwaved away. Look what we've done to so much of our life on the altars of dubious safety issues not net connected. But- they *ARE* net connected as DoS can silence refutations of lies.

If we all lock down 100% of anon/no audit trail net communications, we end up killing our own freedom on the altar of not doing what it takes to beat the bots. Throttling floods and smart heuristic tools might be "Good Enough" to keep that port open while firewalling malnets. I propose the "Whitespace Radio" maths for heuristics using shared tables of variance fingerprinting. Details have been on my plate 2 years and I may share shortly:}

Mailservs allowing Anon broadcast can indeed be misused for bad. But is it a good idea to assassinate all anon posting? I wonder how forgotten Anon Penet is? And why they met the other sort of "Fair Game" policies.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penet_remailer

Spam and all DoS schemes have a common point of inherently being criminal. Which in one admittedly rather dubious fiction- renders players at those games "Fair Game" for destruction by any means someone chooses to employ.

Some of these "Hardened Bot" projects will swiftly get into the "Fair Game" zone. And it presumably will come from Very Bad People with Zero Scruples or Ethics.

The history of Cause>Effect was predicted by John Brunner in 1975!

Where a group using similar concepts as this Botnet, but for GOOD causes was slated for destruction by literally shutting down the PLANETARY Net to kill their "Worm" and failing that- well, read the book! Googling for the tl:dr summary is cheating yourself too.

The Shockwave Rider-ISBN 0-060-10559-3 is that book.

Pre-reading the Toffler's initial book is not essential, but helps expand the horizons

Future Shock ISBN 0-394-42586-3 by Alvin Toffler is worth reading as explaining how we got to some of what we now have in our lives! It also deeply and truly SUCKS how slighted his wife Hedi had been for many years by gender bias in the publishing/academic realms..

My self summary if all the above is tl;dr goes like this:

Consider one use of malicious nets as a wedge to kill freedom itself. Be VERY afraid..