Full Disclosure mailing list archives
RE: 40,000 deaths per year - Was: CyberInsecurity: The cost of Mo nopoly
From: "Schmehl, Paul L" <pauls () utdallas edu>
Date: Tue, 30 Sep 2003 12:29:55 -0500
-----Original Message----- From: Christopher F. Herot [mailto:cherot () appliedmessaging com] Sent: Tuesday, September 30, 2003 11:14 AM To: Michael Smith; full-disclosure () lists netsys com Subject: RE: [inbox] Re: [Full-disclosure] CyberInsecurity: The cost of Mo nopoly Actually, the average person doesn't now squat about how to DRIVE a car either. The result is that 40,000+ people die every year in this country from car "accidents." I'd say the computer industry is doing pretty well by that standard.
Now this is a really dumb argument. How many licensed drivers are there in the US? 60 million? Your 40,000 deaths represents .0000667 percent of the total population of drivers. And not all 40,000 were driving, so the real percentage is some factor smaller than that. So, the 40,000 very obviously does not represent the "average" driver. Furthermore, you really have to calcuate the number of person/miles driven to see what the real accident rate is, and when you do that it's incredibly miniscule. The death by vehicle rate in America proves that we are doing a very *good* job of training people to drive, despite all the anecdotal evidence you can conjur up for stupid drivers. Given that, your analogy is specious at best, but even given that, it proves that the computer industry is *much* worse off. What's the rate of infection for Blaster worldwide, for example? I haven't seen anything definitive, but I'd bet it's in the hundreds of thousands. And we have *perhaps* 100 million computers worldwide? So the percentage of infections would be in the less than 1% range? Still much much higher than the numbers above. Paul Schmehl (pauls () utdallas edu) Adjunct Information Security Officer The University of Texas at Dallas AVIEN Founding Member http://www.utdallas.edu/~pauls/ _______________________________________________ Full-Disclosure - We believe in it. Charter: http://lists.netsys.com/full-disclosure-charter.html
Current thread:
- RE: 40,000 deaths per year - Was: CyberInsecurity: The cost of Mo nopoly Schmehl, Paul L (Sep 30)
- <Possible follow-ups>
- RE: RE: 40,000 deaths per year - Was: CyberInsecurity: The cost of Mo nopoly Christopher F. Herot (Sep 30)