[geeks] This is bad but tempting

[Olaf Mersmann]

* Brian Dunbar <brian.dunbar at plexus.com> [040419 16:51]:
> That is, it would be if I were out of work, had a farm of computers and 
> a broadband connection
> 
> http://www.virtualmda.com/
*snip*

This seems to be a Windows only app. I wonder how long it will be before
some worm either a) uses a bug in the program to massivly distribute itself
b) some whacker uses this "virtual" infrastructure as a wonderful SPAM relay
system.

I've just skimmed thier web pages, but for what it's worth, this seems like
a disaster waiting to happen. Not only will it enable any 13 year old to
sniff eMails with minimal effort from complete strangers (yes, I know we all
should crypt our eMails - at least the important ones, but PGP/GPG never
caught on and S/MIME certificates aren't being passed out for free (at least
here in Germany)), but it will put a whole new burdon on mail admins since I
suspect a large number of these virtual MDAs will be sitting in dial-in IP
blocks which are usually blacklisted by most mailservers. I wonder how
reliable the service will be...

But if you have the spare compute cycles and lots of free bandwidth I guess
it's a nice way to earn some extra cash. But since they pay by the CPU hour
I doubt you can really make any significant amounts with it.

Just my 2 cents.

Olaf