Hackers Hack, ISPs Slack

In many people's opinion (mine amongst them) ISP shouldn't just stand for Internet Service Provider but for Internet Service Police as well. Are we asking for too much? I don't think so, since they are the ones that can really do something against hackers. Not once have researchers and white hat hackers discovered vulnerabilities that sites had, or malicious users' IP addresses, reported them to ISPs which have done nothing regarding the issues.

I've seen this on The Register, and I have to say that I'm a bit amazed at their lack of preoccupation regarding cyber-threats. Lawrence Baldwin (a security researcher) has sent an e-mail to Optimimum Online (an ISP) warning that one of their clients had a keylogger installed and could lose a serious amount of dough because of that. Of course, the company did not respond to the researchers' mail, not even after 3 weeks. They are the ISPs, for Haven's sake! I don't understand why security doesn't seem to be important to them!

Baldwin had an interesting statement, that had been posted on The Register: "The abuse and security department at an ISP is the bastard step-child component of a service provider. In some sense, they're doomed to failure by design." It's funny, sad and true, all at the same time. Sure, there are some ISPs that bother with policing the Net, but they are not enough to make a real difference.

Take the Storm virus for example, it infected a lot of computers and formed a botnet of huge computing power. Do you think the ISPs did something about it? Nope. In any case, it's not their direct duty to act on the web security of their clients. They just provide them with Internet, but they also have a lot of power to enact on cyber-threats, so why not use it? Well... I have no idea...