Like many security experts, I use various hardware, operating systems, and web browsers. Tonight, for example, I did some surfing with Opera-U3 running on Windows 2000 under a VMware session inside my laptop via a T-Mobile wireless card.

Suddenly a warning message pops up on the screen. “[SANS.org] is using an outdated encryption method which is no longer classified as secure. It cannot sufficiently protect sensitive data. Do you wish to continue?”

You gotta love the irony of a computer security website that lacks security.

I switched over to the VMware session where I keep my calendar appointments. First I set aside four hours on 31 March to “generate a ‘collision’ certificate for SANS.org.” Then I set aside one hour on April Fool’s Day to “issue the ‘collision’ certificate you generated.”

Then I switched back and clicked “Yes” so I could continue surfing at SANS.org. Man, I can’t wait for April Fool’s Day…

You gotta love the world’s innocent and well-meaning Internet users. To hear the computer security experts, the users themselves sometimes rise up as a mob to viciously attack the very foundations of the Internet. And nothing could be more threatening on this day than the inauguration of Barack Obama.

SANS blogger Adrien de Beaupré quotes a colleague who asks if “companies used any counter measures to assure quality of service of their network due to employees utilizing higher amounts of bandwidth” to watch the U.S. inauguration…

SANS blogger Adrien de Beaupré raised his concerns today about innocent and well-meaning Internet users who may have flooded their employers’ and ISPs’ bandwidth by watching the inauguration from their desktops & laptops & iPhones. Beaupré quotes a colleague who asks “have these companies used any counter measures to assure quality of service of their network due to employees utilizing higher amounts of bandwidth due to this great moment in history?”

Beaupré himself questions if we’ll see “overwhelmed 802.11 wireless APs and cell phone services” due solely to those innocent and well-meaning Internet users who threaten the very foundations of the Internet.

“Counter measures”? Good grief, that rolly-polly grandmother is watching the inauguration on her grandson’s iPhone! Tackle her!

Oh, but Beaupré does worry at the end of his blog about the occasional evil entity lurking out there among the vicious mob of innocent and well-meaning users. “[Will we see] new Obama related spam and malware? A new spate of attacks while everyone is paying attention to the event?”

Memo to Adrien de Beaupré: antivirus vendors have long suffered this fate every time virus hysteria strikes. Customers all over the world swarm their websites, either crushing them or causing the antivirus firms to pay big bucks for emergency bandwidth. Yet to the very best of my recollection, the antivirus industry never described their survival tactics as “counter measures.”

Adrien, the rest of the world could learn a valuable lesson the easy way if they studied how antivirus firms deal with the actions of innocent and well-meaning users. Oh, and the rest of the world could learn a valuable lesson the easy way if they studied how antivirus firms avoid viruses…