ARTS & FARCES internet

When was the last time you were at a trade show or conference that actually started on time? Gnomedex II started right on schedule, with Chris Pirillo taking the stage with a digital video camera documenting the audience. Pirillo is much too young to remember that Ted Nelson used to do this all the time at his speaking engagements. Pirillo is an entertaining speaker and spent a short time on the obligatory welcome and thanks.

Within minutes, Rob Rosenberger was on stage giving a brief history of virus hoaxes. Rosenberger, like Pirillo is an engaging speaker. Gnomedex clearly differs from most technology conferences in that the speakers (at least so far) have actual personalities, and they’re not presenting sales pitches. Refreshing and welcome.

Rosenberger is clearly knowledgeable about computer security, and revealed that the U.S. Air Force has a problem with virus hoaxes so severe that it has issued an order, AFI 33-119, that consists of four words: “chain letters are illegal” and has classified virus hoax email as chain letters. As you can see from the above link to the AFI 33-119 document, no mention of virus hoaxes or chain letters is mentioned. Perhaps Rosenberger was referring to a different document and needs to update his slides. I’ll try to buttonhole him later today and find out.

According to Rosenberger, myths breed fear and fear breeds hoaxes, so the future is bright for virus hoaxes in the near term. Offering a glimpse of a possible future on the virus front, Rosenberg predicts a series of variations on the NaughtyRoot theme using whois queries to harvest contact information for domain administrators.

Rosenberger classified the Code Red virus as a hoax because of the media hype associated with it. Code Red was responsible for taking down more than a few routers (including ours) and it’s misleading to classify it as a hoax.

Nonetheless, Rosenberger was one of the most engaging speakers I’ve seen in a while and his address was very entertaining.