Brian Krebs needs a fact checker

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September 26, 2007

Brian Krebs needs a fact checker

Filed under: Misc — Scott @ 4:24 pm

The Washington Posts Brian Krebs strung together some words about a forum spam bot. In the process he insinuated that bot writers are criminals. That pisses me off.

I like bots. I like writing bots. Sometimes my bots suck for you; most of the time they don’t. I have never knowingly broken the law writing or using my bots. Brian Krebs (BK) would like you to assume otherwise.

Brian Krebs wants you to conclude programmers who make monotonous problems easy are cracking your computer. Brian Krebs is a journalist but not much of expert on computers or the internet. The Washington Post lists his qualifications as “tinkering at home on five computers” and writing about security since 2000. If reporting about a subject makes you an expert then I’m a monkey.

Specifically from the article:

BK: Like regular spam, a great deal of “blogspam” is sent with the help of automated tools, such as personal computers that cyber crooks have commandeered with Internet worms that allow the bad guys to control them remotely.

Yes blog spam is sent with the use of automated tools which is legal. No one I know uses compromised machines, writes viruses or worms to do it. Why would you break the law to do something that you can easily do with existing solutions that are legal and free? You could use your own cheap hosting for a proxy, a Tor network, or open proxies that are listed openly.

BK: The authors of this software package claim their product can evade a variety of technologies designed to defeat blogspam

Brian the software your talking about is for spamming forums not blogs. Maybe I am being pedantic since it is the same technology but just the same you are wrong.

BK: Botmasters… ….are the criminals who control the large, distributed networks of compromised personal computers used to send spam.

Maybe the people you know who use the moniker are criminals but this software has nothing to do with them so why mention it? Stop trying to infer that people who write bots are all trying to bust in your computer and store kiddie porn on it. Bots are simply programs that are written to automate tasks. You and some of your readers probably have used some and didn’t even know it. Ever heard of a macro? Thats a bot too. Sure some bots suck for users but most don’t. Most of us who write them are doing pretty innoucous things similar to cut and paste. Thats not so bad now is it?

I hope the next time Brian writes he puts more thought into his statements. If he doesn’t I may have to send my enforcer over.