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Why internet innoculation is on governments' agenda
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INSIGHT Why governments are interested in internet inoculation
level so a driver can be sure they won’t be stranded. That technology would also allow electric cars to make the grid more resilient, rather than just more complex. Ireland, Portugal and Denmark are all blessed with reliably strong winds that make wind-power attractive. But a lot of their output comes at night when demand is low. Feeding it to hungry cars will ensure it isn’t wasted, says Paturet. Moving further into the future, it may even be possible to draw power from plugged-in vehicles to smooth out any sudden surges in demand. “It makes the grid smarter and increases its ability to suck up extra capacity,” says DiNucci. ■
Computer “vaccines” could be an invasion of privacy
make the internet secure, agrees Lilian Edwards, an internet lawyer at the University of Sheffield in the UK. She fears greater invasions of privacy are on the way, with individuals’ computers subject to some form of third-party inspection – perhaps from the ISP. A study by Sujeet Shenoi at the University of Tulsa, Oklahoma, bears this out. His team examined a range of possible security measures that the government could introduce, including enforced antivirus programmes and feedback sensors installed on all home computers. The team conclude that given a sufficiently severe threat, such proposals would likely be constitutional – even if they were unpopular (International Journal of Critical Infrastructure Protection, DOI: 10.1016/j.ijcip.2010.02.002). However, Ian Brown of the Oxford Internet Institute in the UK believes that for effective internet security, the responsibility should lie with the PC makers, not the users. Government-enforced inoculation programmes would be “enormously controversial”, he says. “A less intrusive alternative exists: the use of product liability to drive up the security of key software such as operating systems.” Paul Marks ■ PEDRO JB BARRADAS/ALAMY
be monitored and even remotely controlled by a power utility, allowing them to slow down the rate cars are drawing power at times of high demand, for example. The firm is already operating chargers on the sites of Silicon Valley companies such as Apple, Pixar and Google, and in public for city authorities such as San Francisco and Houston. The chargers being used in the UK’s Mini E trial are less subtle. They deliver power only after 11 pm, when electricity is cheap, unless a “boost” button is pressed to trigger an hour of more costly charge at any given time. In future, the kind of nuanced monitoring offered by networked points like Coulomb’s is likely to become standard for home chargers, says Denseley. As these “smart meters” are rolled out by the US, the UK and other western governments and start to appear in homes, electricity grids will become more efficient. So can a balance be struck between drivers’ freedom to
SHOULD we treat malicious software the same way as diseases – using quarantine and mass vaccination? Scott Charney, Microsoft’s security vice-president, thinks so. Otherwise the denial-of-service attacks, phishing and spam generated by botnets will never be brought under control, he says. Last week, Charney told the RSA security conference in San Francisco that isolating infected computers from the internet until they’re malware free was the best way to protect the wider internet population. Quite what that would involve, and who would pay for the “vaccination” by antivirus software is unclear, but Charney says it is an approach that is already interesting the US government. –Expect to be charged a lot– But Ray Stanton, head of security at BT in the UK, says such measures head out on the highway and won’t work because the internet keeping the power grid working service provider (ISP) cannot know efficiently? The flexibility of everything about a subscriber’s networked chargers should make computer, such as its available memory that possible, says Denseley. For and the applications it is running. example, a driver might join a tariff “How do you know it has enough that allows a supplier to determine memory to run the vaccine?” he says. when a car draws power, but Quarantine-and-vaccinate guarantees a minimum charge measures alone won’t be enough to
13 March 2010 | NewScientist | 21
INSIGHT Why governments are interested in internet inoculation
level so a driver can be sure they won’t be stranded. That technology would also allow electric cars to make the grid more resilient, rather than just more complex. Ireland, Portugal and Denmark are all blessed with reliably strong winds that make wind-power attractive. But a lot of their output comes at night when demand is low. Feeding it to hungry cars will ensure it isn’t wasted, says Paturet. Moving further into the future, it may even be possible to draw power from plugged-in vehicles to smooth out any sudden surges in demand. “It makes the grid smarter and increases its ability to suck up extra capacity,” says DiNucci. ■
Computer “vaccines” could be an invasion of privacy
make the internet secure, agrees Lilian Edwards, an internet lawyer at the University of Sheffield in the UK. She fears greater invasions of privacy are on the way, with individuals’ computers subject to some form of third-party inspection – perhaps from the ISP. A study by Sujeet Shenoi at the University of Tulsa, Oklahoma, bears this out. His team examined a range of possible security measures that the government could introduce, including enforced antivirus programmes and feedback sensors installed on all home computers. The team conclude that given a sufficiently severe threat, such proposals would likely be constitutional – even if they were unpopular (International Journal of Critical Infrastructure Protection, DOI: 10.1016/j.ijcip.2010.02.002). However, Ian Brown of the Oxford Internet Institute in the UK believes that for effective internet security, the responsibility should lie with the PC makers, not the users. Government-enforced inoculation programmes would be “enormously controversial”, he says. “A less intrusive alternative exists: the use of product liability to drive up the security of key software such as operating systems.” Paul Marks ■ PEDRO JB BARRADAS/ALAMY
be monitored and even remotely controlled by a power utility, allowing them to slow down the rate cars are drawing power at times of high demand, for example. The firm is already operating chargers on the sites of Silicon Valley companies such as Apple, Pixar and Google, and in public for city authorities such as San Francisco and Houston. The chargers being used in the UK’s Mini E trial are less subtle. They deliver power only after 11 pm, when electricity is cheap, unless a “boost” button is pressed to trigger an hour of more costly charge at any given time. In future, the kind of nuanced monitoring offered by networked points like Coulomb’s is likely to become standard for home chargers, says Denseley. As these “smart meters” are rolled out by the US, the UK and other western governments and start to appear in homes, electricity grids will become more efficient. So can a balance be struck between drivers’ freedom to
SHOULD we treat malicious software the same way as diseases – using quarantine and mass vaccination? Scott Charney, Microsoft’s security vice-president, thinks so. Otherwise the denial-of-service attacks, phishing and spam generated by botnets will never be brought under control, he says. Last week, Charney told the RSA security conference in San Francisco that isolating infected computers from the internet until they’re malware free was the best way to protect the wider internet population. Quite what that would involve, and who would pay for the “vaccination” by antivirus software is unclear, but Charney says it is an approach that is already interesting the US government. –Expect to be charged a lot– But Ray Stanton, head of security at BT in the UK, says such measures head out on the highway and won’t work because the internet keeping the power grid working service provider (ISP) cannot know efficiently? The flexibility of everything about a subscriber’s networked chargers should make computer, such as its available memory that possible, says Denseley. For and the applications it is running. example, a driver might join a tariff “How do you know it has enough that allows a supplier to determine memory to run the vaccine?” he says. when a car draws power, but Quarantine-and-vaccinate guarantees a minimum charge measures alone won’t be enough to
13 March 2010 | NewScientist | 21