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01/05/2005: "Deworming the Internet"
A long time ago, I hired a kid to be sysadmin at Tadpole. He actually cut his hair to get the job. (Though he received narry a hint that it would be required, or even appropriate.) His name was Douglas Barnes. He gives me no credit, though I assisted in his escape from the Brothers Jackson at IO.COM. This wasn't the only time I ended up extracting a friend from the deadly embrace of Steve and Ken.
While at Tadpole, Doug became increasingly interested in encryption technologies (Austin had its own little cypherpunks scene) and started work on a telnet that would authenticate and perform a key exchange via RSA. Someone else produced SSH, and I guess he abandoned the work, but the encryption bug had bit. Post-Tadpole, Doug went on to be president at Electric Communities, and then to co-found C2.net with Sameer Parekh. C2 got bought by RedHat in September of 2000.
Doug(las) is back in Austin now, attending UT Law, and has a blog at
Both law enforcement and markets for software standards have failed to solve the problem of software that is vulnerable to infection by network-transmitted worms. Consequently, regulatory attention should turn to the publishers of worm-vulnerable software. Although ordinary tort liability for software publishers may seem attractive, it would interact in unpredictable ways with the winner-take-all nature of competition among publishers of mass-market, internet-connected software. More tailored solutions are called for, including mandatory "bug bounties" for those who find potential vulnerabilities in software, minimum quality standards for software, and, once the underlying market failure is remedied, liability for end users who persist in using worm-vulnerable software.
Interesting stuff.
