If you still want to use Windows for your home computer, that is OK, because its only your own data and it will not affect many users if you get hacked. Last, but not least, its you, not the tax payers that have to spend money fixing it when it happens. Windows may also run some of your games best.

One public service after another gives away the control over their computers to criminal hacker groups. The list keeps getting longer and includes military defence, police force, hospital and other critical institutions. All of the infected computers running Windows, and it seems to be a global issue.

Make no mistake about this – when a computer is infected with malware, it’s all up to the writer of the malware to decide what should be done. Usually the goal is creating a large botnet, but it could just as easily erase all data on the computer, or even upload data from the computers to an internet server. Or just implement a backdoor for later use.

The Norwegian police’s computers has been infected with Conficker a few days now, and they try to calm down people with saying that this was not a targeted attack. Right. THIS what not at targeted attack, but the fact that this automatic attack uses a well known security hole, with published PoC and everything you need means that anyone with the ability to use Google could create their own attack in 1-2-3.

How to hack unpatched computers in 1-2-3:
1.Select your favourite exploit, you can find hundreds of them.
2.Copy and paste the proof of concept code into your little malware
3.Attack and hide.

What we know is that bots have been walking around inside our police offices, and the reason is that the doors has not been locked. The same doors have been open for anyone, who else has been inside since October? We could never know…

If you do this targeted, you will remain undetected for a LONG time unless you screw anything up. The antivirus software will not detect a targeted attack, because they only look for known malware signatures. You know; I bet that the IT-department of some of the institutions that have had their doors unlocked for months now didn’t even reinstall everything on all the computers that have remained unpatched for months, but only removes the malware and updates Windows. So if you hacked the computers a while ago, you can still remain undetected. The doors may be locked now, but you already created your own well hidden backdoor.

How to stay undetected in 1-2-3:
1.Hide your backdoor in existing files
2.Do not mess with anything. Make a copy and mess with the copy.
3.Do not remote control a computer while its in use

Oh, another thing. The Norwegian police force states that they still are working with removing Conficker (Monday afternoon). I hope they don’t have any of the unpatched computers connected to anything, because these are open as a open door as we speak, or type, or read. I mean; I type – You read.

This is really serious. Systems so targeted for malware, and so hard to maintain should not be used by public sector. Yes, I say hard to maintain. If you installed Debian in 1996, you could still run it and have it patched. If you run Windows from 1996, you have to have reinstalled at least once, preferably twice, and bought new hardware at least once, again preferably twice.

Another issue is, that swapping to Linux for public sector would not only be safer, but also cheaper and more reusable.

Many countries are already doing this with success, so why shouldn’t we all? The French police are migrating all 90.000 workstations by 2015, and even if they only moved 5.000 so far, they have saved 50.000.000 Euro in licensing and maintenance costs.

Cheaper, safer, simpler, better. Who decides that we still stick with Windows? This is a political matter, and politicians say go open source, yet (almost) nothing happens.

The work with getting rid of closed source in public sector needs to accelerate before public sector is owned by hackers or script kiddies.

Who would like to hack the police, or the hospitals? I can think of a few groups:
1.The botnet makers
2.Criminals looking for stuff to blackmail others on
3.Kids fooling around

I guess there are more groups, but this should be enough to start locking the doors. Right?

Some years ago hacking was about fun, learning and freeing information. Then came the fame, and suddenly it turns bigtime, and these days its all about the money. Incredible many computers are remote controlled by criminal hacking groups to spam the rest of the world, stealing passwords, performing denial of service attacks and more. Imagine all this computer power used to search for stolen computers and illegal material on infected computers.

Yes, I know – there is a privacy issue. The irony is that privacy has left the building, years ago. You leave an electronic trace around everywhere, to be used and abused. And the creators of malware – they basically own your computer at some point or another.

In an action movie the idea of all computers all over the world starting to mailing the police if illegal porn was found would be a great idea. In the real world I guess we have to stick with computers mailing you about penis enlargement and the big lottery you won.

There might be some gray areas as well. Like looking at a computers MAC-address to see if it is stolen. To check the MAC-address of the wireless network card, you do not have to look into the computer, since its visible from outside.

When its about wireless networks, its much like driving down the street looking at other peoples houses. If you see into a window, and you think what you might just saw was some illegal activity, its probably your duty to have another look, and call the police if you still believe there is some illegal activity. On the other hand, f the shades are down, it would be illegal for you to lift up the shades to have a look. Even though the radio waves of a wireless network is much similar to the light rays that comes out of the neighbors window, these waves is not visible to your eyes, but to your computer. If the network is open, a script could have a quick look and email the police, and it would be good, but if there is a WEP, and your script breaks this key first, it would be bad. Right?