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Internet catastrophe It's a crude characterization. But a major debilitating An article in Legal Affairs magazine, adapted from an upcoming book on the Internet's future, provides some such food for thought. Viruses are a reality in cyberspace. But Jonathan Zittrain writes that viruses are not, as some might think, an easily manageable, minor annoyance. Firewalls and antivirus software are not the cure-all for the threat of computer infections. In fact, Zittrain says that despite advancements in technology and the popularity of the Internet, the virus threat is even greater than it was in 1988. That was the year of the first Internet worm. Its damage was minimal because the software creator did not intend to spread and destroy. The unnerving reality noted by Zittrain is that the capacity for destruction via the Internet is great. One worm, which infected half a million computers in three days in May 2004, was from a less-than-malicious spreader. A purposeful one could wreak untold havoc. Like what? There would be, Zittrain writes, "no check-in at some airline counters; no overnight deliveries or other forms of package and letter distribution; the inability of payroll software to produce paychecks for millions of workers; the elimination, release or nefarious alteration of vital records hosted at medical offices, schools, town halls and other data repositories that cannot afford a full-time IT staff to perform backups and ward off technological demons." Guarding against such a catastrophe would involve quite a few changes, ones that balance the appeal of the Internet's encouragement of creativity with the need for greater scrutiny of computer code. The best way to go about that is debatable, but Zittrain raises a valid warning about what could happen if nothing is done ahead of time. More study should be paid to the best way to secure the computers that are connected to the vast and ever-necessary world of the Internet.
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