Sharing a great Slashdot comment . . .

[Belisarius]

In a response to this article on the rise of European machines acting as zombies for routing of spam, I came across this comment:

Man. If you could go back in time to 1980 and tell everyone that in 25 years, European governments would be spearheading an initiative called "Operation Spam Zombies", and that this name was not in any way meant to be humorous, the looks on peoples faces would be priceless.

[technobard]

That's hilarious! On a related note, it's a little scary out there on the 'net these days. I opened up the standard ssh port through my firewall for a few days as part of some things I was trying out on my linux box. I should have at least changed the port, but I was lazy. Anyway, I got what looked like an automated brute force attack from a machine somewhere in France and another in the Czech Republic showing up in the logs. I've since moved to an SSL VPN (really an SSL gateway). I'm reasonably knowledgable about basic security, though certainly not an expert. Your average Joe Schmoe doesn't stand a chance.

[Belisarius]

One good thing about my current internet connection - not many people want to mess with a connection that has a 1 second ping time.

[technobard]

Ouch! 1 second? Do you have dialup?

[Belisarius]

Satellite. The speed of light is too slow . . .