A few weeks back, the fine folks at Microsoft used a healthcare analogy to describe a possible solution to the Internet’s bot infestation. Scott Charney suggested that every PC should have a health certificate which would provide access to the Internet. No health certificate, no access. Kind of like a penalty box for consumer Internet users. It’s an interesting idea, and clearly we need some kind of solution to the reality that Aunt Bessie has no idea her machine has been pwned and is blasting spam and launching DDoS attacks.

Unfortunately it won’t work, unless mandated by some kind of regulation. It’s really an economic thing. Comcast will proactively send devices connected to their network exhibiting bad behavior a message telling them they are likely compromised. They call it their Bot Alert program. Then they point to a nice web page where the consumer can get answers. The consumer is then expected to address the issue. If they can’t (or don’t) Comcast will continue to notify the customer until they do. Here’s the rub: if the consumer knew what they were doing in the first place, they wouldn’t have gotten pwned.

You can’t blame Comcast (or any other ISP) for drawing a line in the sand. They charge maybe $40 a month for Internet service. The minute a customer picks up the phone and calls for help, they lose money for that month. There is no financial incentive for them to try to fix the compromised device. Sure, a bot does bad things. But bad enough to spend staff time trying to fix every one of them? The constant notifications will definitely push a customer to call and force Comcast to help them address the issue. I guess that worked OK in their pilot test, but we’ll see how well it scales as they roll it out nationwide.

And Comcast seems to be out in front on this issue. I’m not familiar with any similar initiatives from the other major ISPs. So let’s tip our hat to Comcast for at least trying to do something. But is it the right approach?

Do we just accept the fact that a percentage of consumer devices will be pwned and will exhibit bad behavior. Is it a cost of doing business for the ISPs? Is there some other kind of technical, procedural, or cultural answer?

I wish I knew. What do you folks think? Can this health certificate thing work? Am I just stuck in a cycle of cynicism that prevents me from seeing any solution to this problem? Or do we just make sure our families aren’t the path of least resistance and forget the rest?

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