nanog mailing list archives

Re: amazonaws.com?


From: "Jay R. Ashworth" <jra () baylink com>
Date: Wed, 4 Jun 2008 13:25:28 -0400

On Thu, May 29, 2008 at 11:10:40AM -0700, Joel Jaeggli wrote:
Barry Shein wrote:
Equating port 25 use with domestic terrorism is specious.

Ammonium nitrate requires requires some care in handling regardless of 
your intentions,see for exmple the oppau or texas city disasters.

And how different is that from the million+ strong zombie botnets? Who
owns (not pwns) those zombie'd systems and what were their intentions?

Well let's see. The texas city disaster is/was considered the worst 
industrial accident in american history. 581 people killed by an 
explosive yield of about 2 kilotons. The secondary effects includes 
fires in many of the chemical facilities in Galveston and a swath of 
destruction that reached up to 40 miles inland...

http://www.local1259iaff.org/disaster.html

So no, I don't think internet attached hosts can casually equated with 
the destructive potential of a pile of fertilizer at least not in the 
context described.

One word: SCADA.

Yes, in point of fact, I think it *is* reasonable to evaluate potential
threats to "just some PCs getting pwned" in terms of physical damage
on grander scales.

It's not just about spam, or fraudulent credit charges.

Cheers,
-- jra
-- 
Jay R. Ashworth                                                jra () baylink com
Designer                +-Internetworking------+---------+            RFC 2100
Ashworth & Associates   |  Best Practices Wiki |         |             '87 e24
St Petersburg FL USA    +-http://bestpractices.wikia.com-+     +1 727 647 1274

      If you can read this... thank a system administrator.  Or two.  --me


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