Re: NYT article on the (ever-more-sophitsticated) bot wars

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Karl Auerbach <karl () cavebear com>
Date: December 10, 2008 8:17:03 PM EST
To: dave () farber net
Cc: tlauck () madriver com, dpreed () reed com, spaf () mac com
Subject: Re: [IP] Re:     NYT article on the (ever-more- 
sophitsticated) bot wars

David Farber wrote:

> From: Tony Lauck <tlauck () madriver com>

> 1.  Owners of networked computers would be held legally responsible  
> for all activities performed by their computers

Well, as a lawyer I find that a somewhat difficult proposition -  
particularly since it is unclear what is fully "proper", what is  
merely lack of etiquette, and what is worthy of limitation or  
sanction.  And the botnet issue is one in which things that are  
individually merely annoying and not individually unlawful can  
cumulate and become dangerous and a menace to organized society.

But setting those difficult questions aside for the moment, this issue  
of protecting the network from the users is something that has  
interested me as a techie for a very long time (since the mid 1980's).

Over the last few years I've discussed (and have worked on) what I  
call the "internet demarc" - the point of delineation between what in  
telco-ese is customer premise equipment and what is provider equipment.

I do have normal, sane interests - like restoring full size steam  
locomotives.  But I also have a perverse interest in funny widgets  
like the old ISDN NT-1 and telco lightning protectors - things that  
the telco's use to protect their infrastructure from things that users  
or nature might do at the edges.

Normally these kinds of protective devices would be a boring concept.  
However, I'm looking at it from the point of view of a means to bring  
about my larger goal, that of turning the internet from a mirage of  
being a utility grade service to the actuality of being a utility  
grade, even lifeline utility grade, service.
(See my paper From Barnstorming to Boeing - Transforming the Internet  
Into a Lifeline Utility - http://www.cavebear.com/archive/rw/Barnstorming-to-Boeing.ppt 
 with my notes at http://www.cavebear.com/archive/rw/Barnstorming-to-Boeing.pdf)

Building a utility grade internet will not be easy given the fact that  
the net is composed of a balkanized world of competing carriers and  
that much of our internet software is of quite poor quality.  (By-the- 
way, I do support a gentle and slow, but inexorable, introduction of  
legal liability for software flaws and the outlawing of blanket  
exclusions of liability in software license agreements.)

So my approach is twofold: create a box that makes it easier for  
providers to diagnose and repair net problems while, at the same time,  
acting as a kind of reverse firewall that tries to constrain the bad  
stuff that a customer might emit onto the network.

I do this by creating a demarcation that is quite intelligent -  
something that knows enough to prevent at least the most obvious forms  
of bad behavior of customer equipment from flowing onto the net. This  
is non-trivial: It is difficult (but not impossible) to go beyond  
simple heuristics - like blocking packets bearing wrong source IP  
addresses.

One aspect of such a device in terms of free use of the net is that  
such a device is a remote-control switch that could be used to  
disconnect (or monitor) any user (modulo end-to-end encryption).   
Local providers have that ability already - they could just unhook the  
user's IP-level wire or attach a wireshark - but this kind of box  
extends this so that "bad people" (including perhaps overzealous gov't  
actors) might be tempted to pull the switch or do remote monitoring.   
In other words, this kind of facility needs to be protected else it  
can become another place where bad things may be done without anybody  
knowing.

Such a demarc can do many other interesting things that could save  
providers a pile of support money - such as obviating the need for  
grandma from calling the provider tech support and being told "open a  
command window and run 'tracert'".

As I said, I've been poking at this concept for more than two decades  
- I've got bits and pieces running.  And I've publicly written about  
it (hopefully creating a derail should anybody try to patent such a  
device.)  I've just been too busy with other things to actually finish  
it.

In the longer term it would not surprise me that if such devices  
existed (either as physical units or as certified software that could  
be stuck into non-bypassable control paths in software based systems)  
that either providers or governments might require that such devices  
be used in order to attach devices to the net.

There are many troubling implications of devices that purport to  
protect the net from the user; but I foresee something of that ilk on  
the horizon.  It seems to me that the best way to forestall the bad  
aspects is for good people to build these boxes so that they contain  
only the minimal amounts of the kind of scary stuff that has underlain  
the cases about telco immunity.  And we don't want to give yet another  
tool to the movie and music distribution industries to use in their  
effort to label many internet users as copyright criminals.

                --karl--




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