Firewall Wizards mailing list archives

Re: Re: Anybody Recognize These Uploads?


From: Mike Hoskins <mike () adept org>
Date: Fri, 3 Jan 2003 13:04:49 -0800 (PST)

On Fri, 3 Jan 2003, Gary Flynn wrote:
It's easier to block a country, class A/B/C, etc. than it is to monitor,
inspect, track and resolve potential issues.  Doing things simply because
they're easy, however, rarely leads to the desired result.
Engineers and managers can no more "monitor, inspect, track, and
resolve potential issues" brought on by connecting the world's
population than can scientists, politicians, law enforcement, and
religious leaders.

I understand your frustration, but somewhat disagree...

An open network, like an open society, requires cooperative,
educated members for it to function.

Precisely, and it is by help of these cooperative, educated members of
the Internet society (I know they're out there ;), or at least the network
(security) engineering society, that monitoring, inspecting, tracking and
resolving potential issues becomes possible.

The people I know choose access and hosting providers, for example, based
upon peer review.  I.e. If Provider A has operations staff that is known
to help identify, track and resolve DoS/DDoS attacks then I'd rather be a
part of their cooperative, educated, helpful network society than Provider
B's who just blackholes a class C when one IP within the block is found to
be an open relay.  (This is just one easy example.  :)

I'm not arguing there's not a time and place for blackholing or other
action on the part of the admin, but I think some of these bandaids are
chosen too quickly without careful consideration of the potential
imlications.  (Hey, that's life.)

--
Mike Hoskins            This message is RFC 1855 compliant,
mike () adept org               www.adept.org/pub/rfcs/rfc1855.html

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