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by James Robertson.
Original Post: It's ecosystem
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Ben Hammersley's post about the upswing in blog comment spam demonstrates something - security has more to do with the size of the ecosystem than with anything else. Why is Windows such a huge target? Because there are so many Windows systems available - anything that hits a vulnerable system has a lot of potential new places to spread. Posit a nasty Mac worm, for instance - as it tries to propagate out, what are most of the systems it tries to hit going to be? Windows boxes. Now look at the various infection rates for Windows worms, virii, and trojans... it's not a huge surprise. Sure, MS has culpability here - but even if they had been trying hard since the release of Win98, Windows would still be the major target.
You are now seeing the same thing in the blogosphere. The popular blog servers are getting hammered, while I've gotten in the low dozens of comment spams. Until 2 weeks ago, I wasn't even trying to filter it out - it just wasn't a problem. Why? It's not due to my entry forms being more secure, it's due to their being rare - only a handful of blogs use my server, so the ecosystem isn't big enough to support bots. The ecosystem for things like Blogger, MT (etc) is big enough - and that's why there's an accelerating "arms race" of spam bots and spam blockers out there - and why you see lots of bloggers throwing their hands up and turning comments off.
I don't have a solution, other than suggesting that you take "the road less traveled" in selecting blog server software. The trouble is, that mostly requires a level of technical literacy beyond the reach and/or interest of the vast majority of people.
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