Security goes mainstream at the NY Times

You know security has gone mainstream when it is a lead story in the Sunday NY Times, even if it is just the Technology section headline. This is the second or third security themed story in the Sunday Times in the last month or so.  This one by John Markoff, details the growing threat by botnets and zombies.  According to the article about 11% of all computers on the net have botnet programs present.  I am not sure I buy that number.

While I generally applaud the fact that security is brought out from the dark corner and into the spotlight by the main stream media, articles like this I am afraid, serve more to scare less sophisticated computer users then to help the problem.  I guess there is a fine line between informing and educating users and scaring them.   I  myself am not sure if I could draw the proper line.  What was interesting was after seeing this article, I saw two other articles, one in C/Net, a reprint of the Times article.