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Microsoft proposes banning Internet access to virus-ridden PCs
By siliconindia
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Friday, 08 October 2010, 10:10 IST
Bangalore: Software giant, Microsoft has proposed that virus-infected computers should be blocked from the internet and kept in quarantine until they are given a 'health certificate.' Scott Charney, Corporate Vice President of Microsoft's trustworthy computing team, wrote on the company's blog that botnet-infected computers should be blocked from connecting to the Internet until they prove themselves clean with a digital health certificate.
Charney also presented the same proposal in a speech at the International Security Solutions Europe (ISSE) Conference in Berlin, Germany explaining that his vision is to look at cyber health as a global problem and to implement a 'global collective defense of Internet health'. "Just as when an individual who is not vaccinated puts others' health at risk, computers that are not protected or have been compromised with a bot put others at risk and pose a greater threat to society," he wrote. Thus he argues that the principles behind tracking, isolating and quarantining a sick person could be applied to locating and fixing botnet infected computers. He believes stressed that systems that are affected with malware or botnets, are capable of infecting other healthy systems that they come into contact with on the internet.
He proposes that the PCs would be issued a 'health certificate' that showed whether the system was fully patched, that it was running security software and a firewall, and that it was malware-free. Machines with deficiencies would require patching or an antivirus update, while bot-infected PCs might be barred from the Internet.
Presenting a paper on 'Collective Defense: Applying Public Health Models to the Internet', he said, "There may be value in uniquely identifying devices, as when a device may be infected on a home network. It may also be possible, of course, to combine device information with other information to identify a user."
The famous botnet researcher also laid out certain points that must be considered as key to any such solution such as the risk that botnets present to Internet users and critical infrastructures must be addressed, collective defense can and should be used to help improve the security of consumer devices and protect against such cyber threats, a public health model can empower consumers and improve Internet security, voluntary behavior and market forces are the preferred means to drive action but if those means fail, then governments should ensure these concepts are advanced, and privacy concerns must be carefully considered in any effort to promote Internet security by focusing on device health.
Meanwhile, several computer security experts suggest that cutting people off from the internet is a wrongheaded solution. There were mixed reposes to this proposal by browsers on several social networking sites and blogs. The practicality of this proposal should be closely examined before implementing it.
