Level3 worldwide emergency upgrade?

Thu Feb 7 01:06:39 UTC 2013

Hell, we used to not have to bother notifying customers of anything, we just fixed the problem. Reminds me a of a story I've probably shared on the past. 

1995, IETF in Dallas. The "big ISP" I worked for at the time got tripped up on a 24-day IS-IS timer bug (maybe all of them at the time did, I don't recall)  where all adjacencies reset at once. That's like, entire network down. Working with our engineering team in the *terminal* lab mind you, and Ravi Chandra (then at Cisco) we reloaded the entire network of routers with new code from Cisco once they'd fixed the bug. I seem to remember this being my first exposure to Tony Li's infamous line, "... Confidence Level: boots in the lab."

Good times.

-b

On Feb 6, 2013, at 5:41 PM, Brandt, Ralph wrote:

> David. I am on an evening shift and am just now reading this thread.   
> 
> I was almost tempted to write an explanation that would have had
> identical content with yours based simply on Level3 doing something and
> keeping the information close.  
> 
> Responsible Vendors do not try to hide what is being done unless it is
> an Op Sec issue and I have never seen Level3 act with less than
> responsibility so it had to be Op Sec. 
> 
> When it is that, it is best if the remainder of us sit quietly on the
> sidelines.
> 
> Ralph Brandt
> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Siegel, David [mailto:David.Siegel at Level3.com] 
> Sent: Wednesday, February 06, 2013 12:01 PM
> To: 'Ray Wong'; nanog at nanog.org
> Subject: RE: Level3 worldwide emergency upgrade?
> 
> Hi Ray,
> 
> This topic reminds me of yesterday's discussion in the conference around
> getting some BCOP's drafted.  it would be useful to confirm my own view
> of the BCOP around communicating security issues.  My understanding for
> the best practice is to limit knowledge distribution of security related
> problems both before and after the patches are deployed.  You limit
> knowledge before the patch is deployed to prevent yourself from being
> exploited, but you also limit knowledge afterwards in order to limit
> potential damage to others (customers, competitors...the Internet at
> large).  You also do not want to announce that you will be deploying a
> security patch until you have a fix in hand and know when you will
> deploy it (typically, next available maintenance window unless the cat
> is out of the bag and danger is real and imminent).
> 
> As a service provider, you should stay on top of security alerts from
> your vendors so that you can make your own decision about what action is
> required.  I would not recommend relying on service provider maintenance
> bulletins or public operations mailing lists for obtaining this type of
> information.  There is some information that can cause more harm than
> good if it is distributed in the wrong way and information relating to
> security vulnerabilities definitely falls into that category.
> 
> Dave
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Ray Wong [mailto:rayw at rayw.net] 
> Sent: Wednesday, February 06, 2013 9:16 AM
> To: nanog at nanog.org
> Subject: Re: Level3 worldwide emergency upgrade?
> 
>> 
> 
> OK, having had that first cup of coffee, I can say perhaps the main
> reason I was wondering is I've gotten used to Level3 always being on top
> of things (and admittedly, rarely communicating). They've reached the
> top by often being a black box of reliability, so it's (perhaps
> unrealistically) surprising to see them caught by surprise. Anything
> that pushes them into scramble mode causes me to lose a little sleep
> anyway. The alternative to what they did seems likely for at least a few
> providers who'll NOT manage to fix things in time, so I may well be
> looking at longer outages from other providers, and need to issue
> guidance to others on what to do if/when other links go down for periods
> long enough that all the cost-bounding monitoring alarms start to scream
> even louder.
> 
> I was also grumpy at myself for having not noticed advance
> communication, which I still don't seem to have, though since I
> outsourced my email to bigG, I've noticed I'm more likely to miss
> things. Perhaps giving up maintaining that massive set of procmail rules
> has cost me a bit more edge.
> 
> Related, of course, just because you design/run your network to tolerate
> some issues doesn't mean you can also budget to be in support contract
> as well. :) Knowing more about the exploit/fix might mean trying to find
> a way to get free upgrades to some kit to prevent more localized attacks
> to other types of gear, as well, though in this case it's all about
> Juniper PR839412 then, so vendor specific, it seems?
> 
> There are probably more reasons to wish for more info, too. There's
> still more of them (exploiters/attackers) than there are those of us
> trying to keep things running smoothly and transparently, so anything
> that smells of "OMG new exploit found!" also triggers my desire to share
> information. The network bad guys share information far more quickly and
> effectively than we do, it often seems.
> 
> -R>
> 
> 
> 