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sage Is/Is Not Spam.” The filter naively calculates a statistical fin-
gerprint for spam and not-spam, and checks the new messages
against them.
This
approach
—
and
similar
ones
—
are
evolving
into
an
immune system for the Internet, and like all immune systems,
a little bit goes a long way, and too much makes you break out in
hives.
ISPs are loading up their network centers with intrusion de-
tection systems and tripwires that are supposed to stop attacks
before they happen. For example, there’s the filter at the hotel I
once stayed at in Jacksonville, Florida. Five minutes after I logged
in, the network locked me out again. After an hour on the phone
with tech support, it transpired that the network had noticed
that the videogame I was playing systematically polled the other
hosts on the network to check if they were running servers that I
could join and play on. The network decided that this was a mali-
cious port-scan and that it had better kick me off before I did
anything naughty.
It only took five minutes for the software to lock me out, but
it took well over an hour to find someone in tech support who
understood what had happened and could reset the router so that
I could get back online.
And right there is an example of the autoimmune disorder. Our
network defenses are automated, instantaneous, and sweeping.
But our fallback and oversight systems are slow, understaffed, and
unresponsive. It takes a millionth of a second for the Transporta-
tion Security Administration’s body-cavity-search roulette wheel
to decide that you’re a potential terrorist and stick you on a no-fly
list, but getting un-Tuttle-Buttled is a nightmarish, months-long
procedure that makes Orwell look like an optimist.
The tripwire that locks you out was fired-and-forgotten two
years ago by an anonymous sysadmin with root access on the
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