This interesting little tidbit comes from an NPR interview

Most people, I think, don't even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?


    -Thomas Hesse, President of Sony's Global Digital Business

Why should they? Well how about this...

I remember when people did not know what a computer worm was. Does that mean people will NEVER care about it? No, as a matter of fact, computer worms are so rampant today, EVERYBODY has now heard of them, and they cost people and buisnesses billions of dollars and send people to jail today. Does that mean someone who writes a worm can use the defence "well it's not dangerous to people who don't know what it is"??? So ,just because most people don't know what a rootkit is today doesn't qutie mean they aren't dangerous and/or that two years from now everybody won't know what they are...

Another example I can give is email. Do you who's reading this right now have any idea what email is??? I remember in one of my ninth grade classes the teacher mentioned the term "email" and ask if anybody in the class knew what email was, and I litarally (I'm not making this up) was the ONLY person in the class to raise my hand. I also was the only person in that class who had an email address at that time (logically). Now every person and their dog has an email address... So again, an example of just because someone doesn't know what it is today, doesn't mean it's not important...


So again, dimwits over at Sony: Just because people don't know what they are does not mean it will not effect them...