[cap-talk] The Limits of POLA's Utility - Social Engineering

[Ian G]

Karp, Alan H wrote:

> Actually, Bob should have been suspicious.  How does he know that Alice
> didn't write the virus in order to blackmail him?  The juicy stuff
> purportedly from Alice's machine could be fake while the evidence of
> Bob's prying is not.  In that sense, it's no different than a police
> sting operation.


People from time to time ask me for a way
to spy on some friend or other of theirs.
I would characterise these people as quite
vulnerable to the attack, and the set of
them is I fear larger than we'd like to
believe.


> There is a better example of a deal with the devil.  The most secure
> home machines are zombies.  In exchange for allowing the controller to
> send spam in the middle of the night, the user gets a machine protected
> from other malware.  That's a true symbiotic relationship.

Ha!  Any evidence of that?  Has that been
seen in the wild?

iang